Cargando…
Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets
BACKGROUND: Birds have extremely well-developed acoustic communication and have become popular in bioacoustics research. The majority of studies on bird song have been conducted in the temperate zones where usually males of birds sing to attract females and defend territories. In over 360 bird speci...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2020
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7585374/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33150091 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10214 |
_version_ | 1783599776176013312 |
---|---|
author | Wheeldon, Amie Szymański, Paweł Budka, Michał Osiejuk, Tomasz S. |
author_facet | Wheeldon, Amie Szymański, Paweł Budka, Michał Osiejuk, Tomasz S. |
author_sort | Wheeldon, Amie |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Birds have extremely well-developed acoustic communication and have become popular in bioacoustics research. The majority of studies on bird song have been conducted in the temperate zones where usually males of birds sing to attract females and defend territories. In over 360 bird species mostly inhabiting the tropics both males and females sing together in duets. Avian duets are usually formed when a male and female coordinate their songs. We focused on a species with relatively weakly coordinated duets, with male solo as the prevailing vocalisation type. METHODS: Instead of analysing a set of recordings spread over a long time, we analysed whole day microphone-array recordings of the Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus), a species endemic to West African montane rainforests. We described the structure of the solo and duet vocalisations and temporal characteristics of daily activity based on 5,934 vocal bouts of 18 focal pairs and their neighbours. RESULTS: Birds had small, sex specific repertoires. All males shared three types of loud whistles functioning as song type repertoires in both solos and duets. Females vocalised with five types of harsh, atonal notes with a more variable and usually lower amplitude. Three of them were produced both as solos and in duets, while two seem to function as alarm and excitement calls given almost exclusively as a solo. Solos were the most common vocalisation mode (75.4%), with males being more vocally active than females. Duets accounted for 24.6% of all vocalisations and in most cases were initiated by males (81%). The majority of duets were simple (85.1%) consisting of a single male and female song type, but altogether 38 unique duet combinations were described. Males usually initiated singing at dawn and for this used one particular song type more often than expected by chance. Male solo and duet activities peaked around dawn, while female solos were produced evenly throughout the day. DISCUSSION: Yellow-breasted Boubou is a duetting species in which males are much more vocal than females and duetting is not a dominating type of vocal activity. Duet structure, context and timing of daily production support the joint resource defence hypothesis and mate guarding/prevention hypotheses, however maintaining pair contact also seems to be important. This study provides for the first time the basic quantitative data describing calls, solos and duet songs in the Yellow-breasted Boubou. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7585374 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75853742020-11-03 Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets Wheeldon, Amie Szymański, Paweł Budka, Michał Osiejuk, Tomasz S. PeerJ Animal Behavior BACKGROUND: Birds have extremely well-developed acoustic communication and have become popular in bioacoustics research. The majority of studies on bird song have been conducted in the temperate zones where usually males of birds sing to attract females and defend territories. In over 360 bird species mostly inhabiting the tropics both males and females sing together in duets. Avian duets are usually formed when a male and female coordinate their songs. We focused on a species with relatively weakly coordinated duets, with male solo as the prevailing vocalisation type. METHODS: Instead of analysing a set of recordings spread over a long time, we analysed whole day microphone-array recordings of the Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus), a species endemic to West African montane rainforests. We described the structure of the solo and duet vocalisations and temporal characteristics of daily activity based on 5,934 vocal bouts of 18 focal pairs and their neighbours. RESULTS: Birds had small, sex specific repertoires. All males shared three types of loud whistles functioning as song type repertoires in both solos and duets. Females vocalised with five types of harsh, atonal notes with a more variable and usually lower amplitude. Three of them were produced both as solos and in duets, while two seem to function as alarm and excitement calls given almost exclusively as a solo. Solos were the most common vocalisation mode (75.4%), with males being more vocally active than females. Duets accounted for 24.6% of all vocalisations and in most cases were initiated by males (81%). The majority of duets were simple (85.1%) consisting of a single male and female song type, but altogether 38 unique duet combinations were described. Males usually initiated singing at dawn and for this used one particular song type more often than expected by chance. Male solo and duet activities peaked around dawn, while female solos were produced evenly throughout the day. DISCUSSION: Yellow-breasted Boubou is a duetting species in which males are much more vocal than females and duetting is not a dominating type of vocal activity. Duet structure, context and timing of daily production support the joint resource defence hypothesis and mate guarding/prevention hypotheses, however maintaining pair contact also seems to be important. This study provides for the first time the basic quantitative data describing calls, solos and duet songs in the Yellow-breasted Boubou. PeerJ Inc. 2020-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7585374/ /pubmed/33150091 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10214 Text en ©2020 Wheeldon et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Animal Behavior Wheeldon, Amie Szymański, Paweł Budka, Michał Osiejuk, Tomasz S. Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
title | Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
title_full | Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
title_fullStr | Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
title_full_unstemmed | Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
title_short | Structure and functions of Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
title_sort | structure and functions of yellow-breasted boubou (laniarius atroflavus) solos and duets |
topic | Animal Behavior |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7585374/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33150091 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10214 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT wheeldonamie structureandfunctionsofyellowbreastedbouboulaniariusatroflavussolosandduets AT szymanskipaweł structureandfunctionsofyellowbreastedbouboulaniariusatroflavussolosandduets AT budkamichał structureandfunctionsofyellowbreastedbouboulaniariusatroflavussolosandduets AT osiejuktomaszs structureandfunctionsofyellowbreastedbouboulaniariusatroflavussolosandduets |