Long-distance communication of acoustic cues to social identity in African elephants

By K. McComb, D. Reby, Lucy Baker, Cynthia J. Moss, Soila Sayialel. 2003

310 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Research on long-distance vocal communication in mammals has tended to focus on the maximum distances over which a vocal signal might be physically detectable. For example, because elephants and some whales communicate using infrasonic calls, and low frequencies are particularly resilient to attenuation, it has often been assumed that these species can communicate over very long distances. However, a wide range of acoustic characteristics typically carry information on individual identity in mammalian calls, and frequency components crucial for social recognition could be distorted or lost as distance from the source increases. We used long-distance playback experiments to show that female African elephants, Loxodonta africana , can recognize a contact call as belonging to a family or bond group member over distances of 2.5 km, but that recognition is more usually achieved over distances of 1–1.5 km. We analysed female contact calls to distinguish source- and filter-related vocal characteristics that have the potential to code individual identity, and rerecorded contact calls 0.5–3.0 km from the loudspeaker to determine how different frequencies persist with distance. Our analyses suggest that the most important frequency components for long-distance communication of social identity may be well above the infrasonic range. When frequency components around 115 Hz become immersed in background noise, once propagation distances exceed 1 km, abilities for long-distance social recognition become limited. Our results indicate that the possession of an unusually long vocal filter, which appears to incorporate the trunk, may be a more important attribute for long-distance signalling in female African elephants than the ability to produce infrasound. Copyright 2003 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subfields: Developmental Biology, Ecology, Signal Processing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e90f16f3e9669299acb54a2852ac86c34afb2a0

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Citations in the corpus

Individual, age and sex-specific information is contained in yellow-bellied marmot alarm calls (2005, background): “Social signalling systems, such as those in elephants (McComb et al. 2003), penguins (Jouventin et al. 1999), seals (Insley 2000) and swallows (Beecher 1989b), might generally be expected to have undergone selection to maximize differences between individual’s vocalizations, as well as selection on…”
Vertebrate Sound Production and Acoustic Communication (2016, background): “…2003 ; Charlton et al. 2007 ), fallow deer ( Dama dama ; McElligott et al. 2006 ; Vannoni and McElligott 2007 ), and koalas ( Phascolarctos cinereus ; Charlton et al. 2011 , 2012 ), along with a variety of other mammalian species (McComb et al. 2003 ; Frey et al. 2007 ; Sanvito et al. 2007 ).”
Female perception of size-related formant shifts in red deer, Cervus elaphus (2007, unknown): “et al. 1999; McComb et al. 2003; Rendall 2003), sex (Rendall et al. 2004), maturity (Reby & McComb 2003) and body size (Fitch 1997; Riede & Fitch 1999; Reby & McComb 2003; Harris et al. 2006).”
Sources of stress in captivity (2007, background): “, 1999), elephants (McComb et al., 2003), cassowaries (Mack and Jones, 2003), hippopotamus (Barklow, 1997), pigeons (Quine, 1979), tigers (von Muggenthaler, 2000), chameleons (Barnett et al.”
Sociality: The Behaviour of Group-Living Animals (2016, background): “…in African elephants , Loxodonta africana , demonstrated the ability of the animals to recognise the call of another specifi c individual at distances of up to 2.5 km. Generally, however, individualspecifi c elements of the calls begin to be lost at distances of over 1.5 km (McComb et al. 2003 ).”
Acoustic analysis of cattle ( Bos taurus ) mother–offspring contact calls from a source–filter theory perspective (2015, background): “Formant frequencies are important for individuality coding in African elephants (Loxodonta africana; McComb et al.,2003), whereas both source and filter-related parameters encode individual identity in goats (Briefer and McElligott,2011a).”
Vocal Communication and Reproduction in Deer (2003, background): “…for the exploration of the acoustic structure of most mammal calls (primates: Lieberman et al., 1969; Owren, 1990; Fitch, 1997; cats: Carterette et al., 1979; dogs: Riede and Fitch, 1999; deer: Reby and McComb, 2003; elephants: McComb et al., 2003; see Fitch and Hauser, in press, for a review).”
Social dominance, seasonal movements, and spatial segregation in African elephants: a contribution to conservation behavior (2007, background): “…important to note that such differences are within the range of infrasonic communicative abilities of elephants; therefore, it is likely that dyads separated by such small distances (relative to elephant home ranges) are still able to coordinate movement (Langbauer et al. 1991; McComb et al. 2003).”
Greetings promote cooperation and reinforce social bonds among spotted hyaenas (2011, background): “2007), use contact calls to ‘stay in touch’ over long distances (e.g. Smolker et al. 1993; McComb et al. 2003; Ramos-Fernandez 2005; Spillmann et al. 2010).”