Data di Pubblicazione:
2017
Abstract:
Vocal individuality is widespread in social animals. Individual variation in vocalizations is a prerequisite for discriminating among
conspecifics and may have facilitated the evolution of large complex societies. Ring-tailed lemurs Lemur catta live in relatively large
social groups, have conspicuous vocal repertoires, and their species-specific utterances can be interpreted in light of source-filter
theory of vocal production. Indeed, their utterances allow individual discrimination and even recognition thanks to the resonance
frequencies of the vocal tract. The purpose of this study is to determine which distinctive vocal features can be derived from the
morphology of the upper vocal tract. To accomplish this, we built computational models derived from anatomical measurements
collected on lemur cadavers and compared the results with the spectrographic output of vocalisations recorded from ex-situ live
individuals. Our results demonstrate that the morphological variation of the ring-tailed lemur vocal tract explains individual
distinctiveness of their species-specific utterances. We also provide further evidence that vocal tract modeling is a powerful tool for
studying the vocal output of non-human primates.
Tipologia CRIS:
03A-Articolo su Rivista
Elenco autori:
Gamba, Marco; Favaro, Livio; Alessandro, Araldi; Valentina, Matteucci; Giacoma, Cristina; Friard, Olivier Pierre
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