Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

A consideration of the music-archaeological evidence of the Upper Palaeolithic from Aurignacian onwards, set within the cultural and anatomical context of its creators: examining its evolutionary relationship with the events of the Mousterian and with successive musical-cultural behaviour during the Mesolithic and Neolithic of Europe. The work builds upon study undertaken as an undergraduate and M.Mus. student, and is the culmination of four years' research at Cambridge. The work is designed to be both a theoretical and practical approach, the product of a thorough documentary survey of literature from several disciplines, contacts with major European institutions, fieldwork abroad and the replication of selected Palaeolithic sound-producers. The first section, devoted to the origins of musical behaviour, explores the relationship between conceptualisation, behaviour and sound alongside major evolutionary developments such as speech, locomotion, manual skills and other forms of non-verbal communication. The Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition is presented as the scenario for the appearance of the sound-producer, and Section 2 outlines the cultural and sociological factors which distinguish Mousterian and Upper Palaeolithic populations. The discovery of the sound-producing mechanism is s.t:en as an outgrowth of bone-working traditions established during the Aurignacian, as a reflection of subsistence strategies adopted by Palaeolithic groups - a mechanism which was to culminate in the advanced forms of the Magdalenian. The discussion focuses upon two major collections from the French sites of Isturitz and Le Placard, and explores how the musical cultures of the Mesolithic and Neolithic may be a continuation of the Palaeolithic, or an adaptation of these traditions to new materials, environments and subsistence strategies. The development of the soundproducer during the post-glacial is considered as part of a wider process of demographic expansion throughout Scandinavia, the Far East, and the New World. The concluding chapter presents a synthesis and overview of the earlier discussion. Examining the relationship between the sound-producer and vocal forms of musical behaviour, it looks more closely at the distinction between technological and conceptual definitions of "music". In attempting to place prehistoric musical behaviour in evolutionary and cultural perspective, it stresses the need to re-examine our own definitions, terminologies and concepts; and ultimately arrives at the question: is it possible to talk of a "concept of music" in prehistory?

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-189). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Not available / text

Stridulation in the waterbug genus Cenocorixa was studied in the field and experimentally in the laboratory. It was shown that both males and females stridulate. The stridulatory signals, analysed by use of a sound spectrograph, were shown to be species and sex specific, differing in temporal pattern of pulses, pulse rate, pulse structure, and signal length. It was shown that the annual rhythm of stridulation in both male and female is correlated with sexual maturity. Males will spontaneously stridulate when there is mature sperm in the testes, and this occurs in spring, early summer, and late fall. Females do not stridulate spontaneously, but can be induced to stridulate when they have chorionated eggs in the lateral oviducts, but no sperm in the receptaculum seminis; they are sexually mature only in the spring and early summer. Stridulation was shown to be important in behavior leading to successful copulation. Male stridulation functions as a calling signal facilitating pair-formation by attracting conspecific females, and as an agonistic signal serving to space out individuals. Males will answer almost any stridulatory signal, but only calls from a conspecific female initiate searching behavior. Receptive females respond to stridulatory stimuli from conspecific males by stridulating, and successful copulations were observed only when preceded by such signal recognition; female stridulation functions as an agreement signal. Stridulation serves as a premating isolating mechanism in Cenocorixa. However, it is not the only isolating mechanism, but is reinforced by geographic and ecological isolation in a number of cases. The Corixidae, since they mostly have only a single stridulatory signal that can function in at least two contexts, are considered to represent a primitive stage in evolution of stridulatory signals: a stage in which functional diversification of signals is just evolving. / Science, Faculty of / Zoology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (February 26, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Frank Johnson, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 24, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

The evolution of mating signals has long interested biologists because changes in mating signal production and/or reception can lead to reproductive isolation and speciation. Here, I examine the evolution of the male mating signal (the advertisement call) and the female preference for this call in the Western Toad, Bufo boreas. Call surveys and a morphological study for the occurrence of vocal sacs, which are necessary for producing these calls, reveal that only populations in the northeastern corner of this species’ range produce long, high-amplitude advertisement calls. This is the first study to report among-population variation in the presence of the major mating signal in any animal. Although populations vary in whether or not males call, phonotaxis tests demonstrate that female B. boreas in calling and non-calling populations have the preference for this call. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that the call was lost in the ancestor to modern B. boreas and then secondarily re-evolved in the ortheastern populations. Bufo boreas is one of many toad species that inhabits the Nearctic region. I use phylogenetic analyses of large and small subunit mitochondrial ribosomal DNA sequences to examine the phylogenetic relationships among Nearctic toad species and test previously proposed biogeographic hypotheses for the colonization history of the Nearctic region. This work indicates that the Nearctic Bufo are monophyletic and result from a single colonization event from the Neotropics. Further, fossil and paleogeographic data suggest that this colonization occurred prior to the formation of a contiguous land bridge between the Neotropic and Nearctic regions. Many of the individuals examined in the Nearctic toad study had previously been sequenced for the same gene region. A surprising number of errors were found in the earlier sequences and attributed to the method of sequence generation. In my final chapter, I review the causes and consequences of sequencing error and present a novel method that uses sequence conservation information to detect errors. This approach is exemplified with the unique dataset of replicated sequences, and resources for easily implementing this approach are made available on the Comparative RNA Web Site (http://www.rna.ccbb.utexas.edu/). / text

No description available.

The species-specific calling songs of male crickets are used by females for species recognition and mate choice. Heritabilities of variation of morphological structures involved in song production, components of the calling song, and body size were estimated for G.firmus. All morphological structures were shown to possess significant additive genetic variation (h$ sp2 sb{ rm S+D} > 0.42)$. One of the five song components examined, pulse rate, was shown to have a significant heritability (h$ sp2 sb{ rm S+D}$ = 0.35). Due to the low correlation between body size and song components, it is unlikely that female G.firmus could use the calling song to assess male body size or wing morph (micropterous or macropterous).