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Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition

Vocal communication of woodpeckers has been relatively little studied so far, mostly because majority of species use drumming to communicate. Our recent study on the Middle Spotted Woodpecker revealed that a call which is specific for floaters is individually distinctive and functions as a vocal sig...

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Autores principales: Węgrzyn, Ewa, Węgrzyn, Wiktor, Leniowski, Konrad
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8611044/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34815426
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02034-3
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author Węgrzyn, Ewa
Węgrzyn, Wiktor
Leniowski, Konrad
author_facet Węgrzyn, Ewa
Węgrzyn, Wiktor
Leniowski, Konrad
author_sort Węgrzyn, Ewa
collection PubMed
description Vocal communication of woodpeckers has been relatively little studied so far, mostly because majority of species use drumming to communicate. Our recent study on the Middle Spotted Woodpecker revealed that a call which is specific for floaters is individually distinctive and functions as a vocal signature of unpaired individuals. The aim of the current study is to investigate whether a contact call of paired territory owners of the same species enables discrimination of individuals and their sex. Acoustic analyses revealed that the call is individually distinctive and experimental approach confirmed that woodpeckers are able to distinguish between a contact call of their partner and a stranger. We also found that the contact call shows significant sex differences. Interestingly, the acoustic parameter enabling sex identification is different than the parameters coding individual variability of the call. The design of a call so that its first part would code the identity of an individual and the second part would code its sex presents an effective and fine-tuned communication system. The results of our study also suggest that the contact call of paired Middle Spotted Woodpeckers may be useful for conservation biologists as a tool supporting other census methods.
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spelling pubmed-86110442021-11-26 Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition Węgrzyn, Ewa Węgrzyn, Wiktor Leniowski, Konrad Sci Rep Article Vocal communication of woodpeckers has been relatively little studied so far, mostly because majority of species use drumming to communicate. Our recent study on the Middle Spotted Woodpecker revealed that a call which is specific for floaters is individually distinctive and functions as a vocal signature of unpaired individuals. The aim of the current study is to investigate whether a contact call of paired territory owners of the same species enables discrimination of individuals and their sex. Acoustic analyses revealed that the call is individually distinctive and experimental approach confirmed that woodpeckers are able to distinguish between a contact call of their partner and a stranger. We also found that the contact call shows significant sex differences. Interestingly, the acoustic parameter enabling sex identification is different than the parameters coding individual variability of the call. The design of a call so that its first part would code the identity of an individual and the second part would code its sex presents an effective and fine-tuned communication system. The results of our study also suggest that the contact call of paired Middle Spotted Woodpeckers may be useful for conservation biologists as a tool supporting other census methods. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8611044/ /pubmed/34815426 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02034-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Węgrzyn, Ewa
Węgrzyn, Wiktor
Leniowski, Konrad
Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
title Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
title_full Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
title_fullStr Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
title_full_unstemmed Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
title_short Contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
title_sort contact calls in woodpeckers are individually distinctive, show significant sex differences and enable mate recognition
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8611044/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34815426
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02034-3
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