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Acoustic variation of spider monkeys' contact calls (whinnies) is related to distance between vocalizing individuals and immediate caller behavior.
Ordóñez-Gómez, José D; Santillán-Doherty, Ana M; Fischer, Julia; Hammerschmidt, Kurt.
Affiliation
  • Ordóñez-Gómez JD; Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.
  • Santillán-Doherty AM; Neurociencias, Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz, Mexico City, Mexico.
  • Fischer J; Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.
  • Hammerschmidt K; Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.
Am J Primatol ; 80(4): e22747, 2018 04.
Article in En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-29566275
Due to several factors such as ecological conditions, group size, and social organization, primates frequently spend time out of visual contact with individuals of their own group. Through the use of long-distance vocalizations, often termed "contact calls," primates are able to maintain contact with out-of-sight individuals. Contact calls have been shown to be individually distinct, and reverberation and attenuation provide information about caller distance. It is less clear, however, whether callers actively change the structure of contact calls depending on the distance to the presumed listeners. We studied this question in spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), a species with complex spatial dynamics (fission-fusion society) that produces highly frequency modulated contact calls, denominated "whinnies." We determined the acoustic characteristics of 566 whinnies recorded from 35 free-ranging spider monkeys that belong to a community located in Mexico, and used cluster analyses, discriminant function analyses, and generalized linear mixed models to assess if they varied in relation to the presumed distance to the listener. Whinnies could be grouped into five subtypes. Since the lowest frequency subtype was mainly produced by spider monkeys that exchanged whinnies at longer distances, and lower frequency calls propagate across longer distances, our results suggest that whinnies vary in order to enhance vocal contact between individuals separated by different distances. Our results also revealed that whinnies convey potential information about caller immediate behaviors and corroborated that these calls are individually distinct. Overall, our results suggest that whinny acoustic variation facilitates the maintenance of vocal contact between individuals living in a society with complex spatial dynamics.
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Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Social Behavior / Vocalization, Animal / Atelinae Type of study: Prognostic_studies Aspects: Determinantes_sociais_saude Limits: Animals Country/Region as subject: Mexico Language: En Journal: Am J Primatol Year: 2018 Document type: Article Affiliation country: Germany Country of publication: United States

Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Social Behavior / Vocalization, Animal / Atelinae Type of study: Prognostic_studies Aspects: Determinantes_sociais_saude Limits: Animals Country/Region as subject: Mexico Language: En Journal: Am J Primatol Year: 2018 Document type: Article Affiliation country: Germany Country of publication: United States