Dataset Information

Context-dependent functions of avian duets revealed by microphone-array recordings and multispeaker playback.

ABSTRACT: In many tropical animals, male and female breeding partners combine their songs to produce vocal duets [1-5]. Duets are often so highly coordinated that human listeners mistake them for the songs of a single animal [6]. Behavioral ecologists rank duets among the most complex vocal performances in the animal kingdom [7, 8]. Despite much research, the evolutionary significance of duets remains elusive [9], in part because many duetting animals live in tropical habitats where dense vegetation makes behavioral observation difficult or impossible. Here, we evaluate the duetting behavior of rufous-and-white wrens (Thryothorus rufalbus) in the humid forests of Costa Rica. We employ two innovative technical approaches to study duetting behavior: an eight-microphone acoustic location system capable of triangulating animals' positions on the basis of recordings of their vocalizations [10] and dual-speaker playback capable of simulating duets in a spatially realistic manner [11]. Our analyses provide the first detailed spatial information on duetting in both a natural context and during confrontations with rivals. We demonstrate that birds perform duets across highly variable distances, that birds approach their partner after performing duets, and that duets of rivals induce aggressive, sex-specific responses. We conclude that duets serve distinct functions in aggressive and nonaggressive contexts.

SUBMITTER: Mennill DJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2610673 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Context-dependent functions of avian duets revealed by microphone-array recordings and multispeaker playback.

Mennill Daniel J DJ Vehrencamp Sandra L SL

Current biology : CB 20080901 17

In many tropical animals, male and female breeding partners combine their songs to produce vocal duets [1-5]. Duets are often so highly coordinated that human listeners mistake them for the songs of a single animal [6]. Behavioral ecologists rank duets among the most complex vocal performances in the animal kingdom [7, 8]. Despite much research, the evolutionary significance of duets remains elusive [9], in part because many duetting animals live in tropical habitats where dense vegetation makes ...[more]

PMID: 18771924

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Project description:BackgroundBirds have extremely well-developed acoustic communication and have become popular in bioacoustics research. The majority of studies on bird song have been conducted in the temperate zones where usually males of birds sing to attract females and defend territories. In over 360 bird species mostly inhabiting the tropics both males and females sing together in duets. Avian duets are usually formed when a male and female coordinate their songs. We focused on a species with relatively weakly coordinated duets, with male solo as the prevailing vocalisation type.MethodsInstead of analysing a set of recordings spread over a long time, we analysed whole day microphone-array recordings of the Yellow-breasted Boubou (Laniarius atroflavus), a species endemic to West African montane rainforests. We described the structure of the solo and duet vocalisations and temporal characteristics of daily activity based on 5,934 vocal bouts of 18 focal pairs and their neighbours.ResultsBirds had small, sex specific repertoires. All males shared three types of loud whistles functioning as song type repertoires in both solos and duets. Females vocalised with five types of harsh, atonal notes with a more variable and usually lower amplitude. Three of them were produced both as solos and in duets, while two seem to function as alarm and excitement calls given almost exclusively as a solo. Solos were the most common vocalisation mode (75.4%), with males being more vocally active than females. Duets accounted for 24.6% of all vocalisations and in most cases were initiated by males (81%). The majority of duets were simple (85.1%) consisting of a single male and female song type, but altogether 38 unique duet combinations were described. Males usually initiated singing at dawn and for this used one particular song type more often than expected by chance. Male solo and duet activities peaked around dawn, while female solos were produced evenly throughout the day.DiscussionYellow-breasted Boubou is a duetting species in which males are much more vocal than females and duetting is not a dominating type of vocal activity. Duet structure, context and timing of daily production support the joint resource defence hypothesis and mate guarding/prevention hypotheses, however maintaining pair contact also seems to be important. This study provides for the first time the basic quantitative data describing calls, solos and duet songs in the Yellow-breasted Boubou.

Project description:Emerging complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-based, high-density microelectrode array (HD-MEA) devices provide high spatial resolution at subcellular level and a large number of readout channels. These devices allow for simultaneous recording of extracellular activity of a large number of neurons with every neuron being detected by multiple electrodes. To analyze the recorded signals, spiking events have to be assigned to individual neurons, a process referred to as "spike sorting." For a set of observed signals, which constitute a linear mixture of a set of source signals, independent component (IC) analysis (ICA) can be used to demix blindly the data and extract the individual source signals. This technique offers great potential to alleviate the problem of spike sorting in HD-MEA recordings, as it represents an unsupervised method to separate the neuronal sources. The separated sources or ICs then constitute estimates of single-neuron signals, and threshold detection on the ICs yields the sorted spike times. However, it is unknown to what extent extracellular neuronal recordings meet the requirements of ICA. In this paper, we evaluate the applicability of ICA to spike sorting of HD-MEA recordings. The analysis of extracellular neuronal signals, recorded at high spatiotemporal resolution, reveals that the recorded data cannot be modeled as a purely linear mixture. As a consequence, ICA fails to separate completely the neuronal signals and cannot be used as a stand-alone method for spike sorting in HD-MEA recordings. We assessed the demixing performance of ICA using simulated data sets and found that the performance strongly depends on neuronal density and spike amplitude. Furthermore, we show how postprocessing techniques can be used to overcome the most severe limitations of ICA. In combination with these postprocessing techniques, ICA represents a viable method to facilitate rapid spike sorting of multidimensional neuronal recordings.

Dataset Information

Context-dependent functions of avian duets revealed by microphone-array recordings and multispeaker playback.

Publications

Context-dependent functions of avian duets revealed by microphone-array recordings and multispeaker playback.

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