Bats increase vocal amplitude and decrease vocal complexity to mitigate noise interference during social communication
| Autor: | Jiang Feng, Tinglei Jiang, Xiong Guo, Jagmeet S. Kanwal, Hui Wu, Congnan Sun, Aiqing Lin |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Computer science Speech recognition Ambient noise level Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Human echolocation Sound perception 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Background noise Heart Rate Chiroptera Adaptation Psychological Animals 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences 050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Communication 05 social sciences Traffic noise Acoustics Pulse (music) Lombard effect Noise Echolocation Vocalization Animal |
| Zdroj: | Animal Cognition. 22:199-212 |
| ISSN: | 1435-9456 1435-9448 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10071-018-01235-0 |
| Popis: | Natural background noises are common in the acoustic environments in which most organisms have evolved. Therefore, the vocalization and sound perception systems of vocal animals are inherently equipped to overcome natural background noise. Human-generated noises, however, pose new challenges that can hamper audiovocal communication. The mechanisms animals use to cope with anthropogenic noise disturbances have been extensively explored in a variety of taxa. Bats emit echolocation pulses primarily to orient, locate and navigate, while social calls are used to communicate with conspecifics. Previous studies have shown that bats alter echolocation pulse parameters in response to background noise interference. In contrast to high-frequency echolocation pulses, relatively low-frequency components within bat social calls overlap broadly with ambient noise frequencies. However, how bats structure their social calls in the presence of anthropogenic noise is not known. Here, we hypothesized that bats leverage vocal plasticity to facilitate vocal exchanges within a noisy environment. To test this hypothesis, we subjected the Asian particolored bat, Vespertilio sinensis, to prerecorded traffic noise. We observed a significant decrease in vocal complexity (i.e., an increased frequency of monosyllabic calls) in response to traffic noise. However, an increase in the duration and frequency of social calls, as have been observed in other species, was not evident. This suggests that signal simplification may increase communication efficacy in noisy environments. Moreover, V. sinensis also increased call amplitude in response to increased traffic noise, consistent with the predictions of the Lombard effect. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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