Repertoire of eleven adult giant mole-rats (Fukomys mechowi) was described and was compared with repertoires of the other subterranean rodents with different social system and different parameters of underground system.

A growing body of behavioural data is beginning to show that, like their male counterparts, female chimpanzees can be competitive and aggressive, particularly when resources come under pressure. These observations are especially surprising because, for a long time, females were simply considered passive pawns of male social manoeuvrings. While we are beginning to understand the complexities surrounding female chimpanzee group living, exactly how females manage these social pressures is unclear. In this thesis I address this by focusing on female competition in wild chimpanzees and the importance of vocal counter-strategies. I examined two commonly produced female vocalisations: copulation calls and victim screams from chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Budongo Forest, Uganda. My results regarding the production and acoustic structure of copulation calls suggests that these vocalisations play a crucial role in the lives of female chimpanzees, dissipating the risks associated with female competition. During aggression, chimpanzee females commonly produce victim screams and these calls have been shown to vary systematically with the severity of aggression experienced. A playback experiment showed that victim screams are meaningful to females and that listeners do not just respond to the acoustically most salient signals in their environment. Females may use this information to keep track of out-of-sight agonistic interactions and make appropriate social decisions regarding whether to avoid an ensuing attack. Taken together, I propose that vocalisations may represent important behavioural counter-strategies, enabling females to navigate successfully through their socially intricate world.

The present study investigated the use of stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) as the first step to build an echoic repertoire with children with no vocal communication skills. We began with echoic probes to establish the child did not have the target sound in their echoic repertoire, then implemented SSP to increase the rate of the target vocalization, and systematically added direct reinforcement, and a delay, until the participant responded in 80% of trials; we then implemented echoic training. We conducted this procedure with 3 young children with autism. This procedure was effective for one of three participants, and her echoic learning history immediately generalized to other sounds. For the other two participants, SSP increased the rate of vocalizations; however, they did not respond in enough trials to move to echoic training before withdrawing from the study. This study provides preliminary evidence for the use of SSP as part of echoic training for children with limited functional communication.

<p>In most aspects of music--e.g., tempo, intensity, and rhythm--the emotional coloring of a melody is due at least in part to physical imitation of the characteristics of emotional expression in human behavior. Thus excited, happy melodies are fast and loud, with syncopated rhythms, whereas subdued sad melodies are slow and quiet, with more even rhythms. The tonality of a melody (e.g. major or minor) also conveys emotion, but unlike other aspects of music, the basis for its affective impact is not clear. This thesis examines the hypothesis that different collections of musical tones are associated with specific emotions because they mimic the natural relationship between emotion and tonality present in the human voice. To evaluate this possibility, I have conducted acoustical analyses on databases of music and speech drawn from a variety of cultures, and compared the tonal characteristics of emotional expression between these two forms of social communication. I find that: (1) the melodic characteristics of music and the prosodic characteristics of speech co-vary when examined across cultures; (2) the principal tonal characteristics of melodies composed in tonalities associated with positive/excited emotion and negative/subdued emotion are much the same in different cultures; (3) cross-cultural tonal similarities in music parallel cross-cultural tonal similarities in vocal expression; and (4) the tonal characteristics of emotional expression in the voice convey distinct emotions, thereby accounting for the specificity of emotional association in musical tonality. These findings, and the implausibility of alternative explanations that could account for them, suggest that the affective impact of musical tonality derives from mimicry of the tonal characteristics of vocalization in different emotional states.</p> / Dissertation

Sex-specific calls are used in male-male agonistic encounters and male-female courtship in many animal species. The ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) is a gregarious Malagasy strepsirhine with twenty-two distinct vocalizations for adults, including two male-specific vocalizations and an additional vocalization with male-specific functions: the howl, the squeal, and the purr. Proposed intra-sexual agonistic functions for these three vocalizations have never been empirically tested. This study&rsquo;s purpose was to investigate the functions of howling, squealing, and purring in the ring-tailed lemur, and to assess the relationships between the rates of these vocalizations and male dominance. From March to July 2010, I collected 600 hours of total data and 480 hours of focal data on male ring-tailed lemurs aged three and older at Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Madagascar. I observed each male continuously for 30 minutes at a time and noted behaviours including all vocalizations and all agonism using one&ndash;zero sampling at 2.5-min intervals. I calculated male dominance rank and vocalization rates from these data. My results indicated that male dominance rank is correlated with male purring rate and with squealing rate, but not with howling rate. Male purring rate increased during intra-sexual agonism and was associated with aggression in agonistic encounters. Squealing rate increased during male-male agonism and indicated both aggression and submission in male-male encounters. Howling rate increased during inter-group encounters and a greater number of males participated in multi-male howling choruses when non-group members were present. Purring and squealing are agonistic vocalizations and used in male-male agonism in the ring-tailed lemur, while howling is used in inter-group encounters.

Sex-specific calls are used in male-male agonistic encounters and male-female courtship in many animal species. The ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) is a gregarious Malagasy strepsirhine with twenty-two distinct vocalizations for adults, including two male-specific vocalizations and an additional vocalization with male-specific functions: the howl, the squeal, and the purr. Proposed intra-sexual agonistic functions for these three vocalizations have never been empirically tested. This study&rsquo;s purpose was to investigate the functions of howling, squealing, and purring in the ring-tailed lemur, and to assess the relationships between the rates of these vocalizations and male dominance. From March to July 2010, I collected 600 hours of total data and 480 hours of focal data on male ring-tailed lemurs aged three and older at Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Madagascar. I observed each male continuously for 30 minutes at a time and noted behaviours including all vocalizations and all agonism using one&ndash;zero sampling at 2.5-min intervals. I calculated male dominance rank and vocalization rates from these data. My results indicated that male dominance rank is correlated with male purring rate and with squealing rate, but not with howling rate. Male purring rate increased during intra-sexual agonism and was associated with aggression in agonistic encounters. Squealing rate increased during male-male agonism and indicated both aggression and submission in male-male encounters. Howling rate increased during inter-group encounters and a greater number of males participated in multi-male howling choruses when non-group members were present. Purring and squealing are agonistic vocalizations and used in male-male agonism in the ring-tailed lemur, while howling is used in inter-group encounters.

This research examined how song is used to transmit information on individual identity in American redstarts (Setophaga ruticilla). Specifically, it attempted to determine whether American redstarts (1) discriminate between neighbors and strangers on the basis of their respective songs, and (2) recognize individuals by their distinctive voice characteristics. I tested the latter by exposing subjects to identical song types sung by different birds. Each subject's behavior was evaluated according to a variety of response variables. In all trials, for all response variables, subjects responded highly but equally to each of the songs played. A post-hoc analysis revealed that the order in which treatment songs were presented affected the birds' responses. For four of five response variables, subjects successfully distinguished between the songs of neighbors and strangers when played the fourth song in the trial. Thus, it would appear that in redstarts this type of discrimination may be observed only after an initial song-exposure period.

The major question addressed by this project was to determine if the long-necked, freshwater turtle Chelodina oblonga, vocalise underwater and whether their vocal activity could be related to behavioural or ecological aspects of their lives. These turtles often live in wetlands where visibility is restricted due to habitat complexity or light limitation caused by factors such as tannin-staining, or turbidity. For many aquatic animals, sound is a useful means of communication over distances beyond their visual acuity. This thesis gives the first detailed account of the underwater vocal repertoire of C. oblonga. In total, over 230 days were spent in the field and more than 500 hours of tape recordings were made for this research. Initially, a number of recordings took place in three wetlands known to support turtle populations: Blue Gum Lake; Glen Brook Dam; and Lake Leschenaultia in Perth, Western Australia; in order to determine the nature of the freshwater sound field and place turtle vocalisations into the context in which they were vocalising. The wetlands differed in terms of degree of enrichment, substrate material, water depth and habitat complexity. Recordings were made over a four-week period in the last month of summer and the first week of autumn (Feb-Mar 2003). Invertebrate sweeps were also taken over a two-week period at each recording site to determine if invertebrate distributions were related to patterns of sonic activity. To determine the influence of wind on ambient noise; recordings were undertaken on winter mornings (June-August, 2003) at Blue Gum Lake and Glen Brook Dam at locations north, south, west and east for four different wind speeds – Beaufort Wind Scale (BWS) 0,1,2 & 3. There were seven distinctive calls recognised in the recordings. The frequency bandwidth most utilised by organisms was between 3 kHz up to around 14 kHz, with the exception of the ‘bird-like song’; which extended from 500 Hz up to around 10 kHz. Blue Gum Lake contained a more diverse and abundant assemblage of invertebrates than Lake Leschenaultia and Glen Brook Dam. Correspondingly, a greater diversity of calls was recorded at Blue Gum Lake, as well as the presence of chorus activity, which was not heard at the two less-enriched sites. The periods of greatest diversity and abundance of macroinvertebrates was synonymous with the increased sonic activity at dusk and midnight with noise levels greatest at dusk in particular, and to a lesser extent at midnight. There was no difference in ambient noise at Blue Gum Lake or Glen Brook Dam at wind speeds of Beaufort Wind Scale 0, 1 and 2. Turtles from three populations were recorded in artificial environments: consisting of round, plastic, above-ground ponds (1.8m dia. x 0.65m depth), which were set up to recreate small wetlands. Recordings occurred from September to October, 2003 and from February to December, 2004 as well as January, 2005. Seven hatchling and five juvenile turtles (CL <10cm) were also recorded in order to ascertain whether very young turtles vocalised. Hatchlings were recorded in a glass aquarium (35.5cm length x 20cm width x 22.0cm depth) and juveniles were placed into a below-ground outdoor pond (1m length x 0.5m width x 0.4m depth). Recordings occurred from as early as 4.30am (dawn recordings) to as late as 1.30am (evening recordings). The recordings revealed that turtles utilise an underwater acoustic communication system (calling at the water’s surface was also noted but these were not recorded or a part of this research) involving a repertoire of both complex and percussive sounds with short, medium and potentially long-range propagation characteristics. Complex structures included harmonically related elements (richly or sparsely) and different rates of frequency modulation. Frequency use extended beyond the in-air auditory sensitivity known for a single species of turtle studied from the family Chelidae; with calls ranging from around 100 Hz in some of the percussive displays, to as high as 3.5 kHz in some complex calls, with ‘clicks’ extending beyond the 20 kHz upper limit of the recording system. However, most of C. oblonga’s vocalisations had dominant frequencies below 1 kHz. Turtles were intermittent callers with an extensive vocal repertoire of seventeen (17) vocal categories - highly suggestive of complex social organisation. Vocalisations included: a) clacks; b) clicks; c) squawks; d) hoots; e) short chirps; f) high short chirps; g) medium chirps; h) long chirps; i) high calls; j) cries or wails; k) cat whines; l) grunts; m) growls; n) blow bursts; o) staccatos; p) a wild howl; and q) drum rolling. Also, two sustained ‘pulse-bouts’ were recorded during the breeding months, hypothesised to function as acoustic advertisement displays – possibly ‘calling songs’. Hatchling turtles were not heard to vocalise within the audible range. Only a single complex vocalisation was heard produced by the juvenile turtles, with a number of percussive calls. Preliminary playback trials were conducted under free-field conditions and within an artificial environment, which consisted of a below ground rectangular tank (2.4m length x 0.8m width x 0.6m deep). A number of turtle calls recorded in the artificial ponds were selected for playback. A UW 30 speaker was used for broadcast of calls. The free-field playbacks occurred at Mabel Talbot Lake and Blue Gum Lake during the months of April and May, 2005. Playback using 14 seconds of an artificially constructed sequence from the sustained ‘pulse-bout’ occurred in the artificial channels. This sequence consisted of some of the first phase pulses followed by a section of the ‘vibrato’. The preliminary free-field playback trials indicated that turtles had some interest in the calls being played by responding with an ‘alert posture’. Turtles were shown to remain in the alert posture for a significantly longer time than when no sound was played or when white noise was played. The extensive repertoire and initial responses to the free-field playbacks indicated that sound has some biological importance for C. oblonga, although results of playbacks under artificial conditions were inconclusive.

Diploma thesis (Biology)--Universität Hannover, 2004. / "2004"--title page. Title from initial PDF page image (viewed October 5, 2006). Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-53).

Vocalizations are widely studied as possible non-invasive indicators of welfare. The most common vocalizations in pigs are grunts and screams. This thesis is focused on the relationship between vocal parameters of piglet's grunts and screams and the behavioural arousal (which is assumed to indicate stress intensity) during the social isolation.