Individuality of contact calls in the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus ruber and the problem of background noise in a colony. Ibis 139
Acoustic communication has great importance in social relationships and especially in individual recognition in the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterws ruber However, it is con-strained by the noisy environment of the colony. I performed an analysis of both the temporal and frequency patterns of contact...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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1996
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.629.337 http://www.cb.u-psud.fr/pdf/Mathevon_Ibis_97.pdf |
| Summary: | Acoustic communication has great importance in social relationships and especially in individual recognition in the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterws ruber However, it is con-strained by the noisy environment of the colony. I performed an analysis of both the temporal and frequency patterns of contact calls and showed that the use of both is essential for discrimination between individuals. I made a search for the acoustic param-eters which are used by the flamingos. It appears that the call duration, the slow amplitude modulation, the spectrum bandwidth and the repartition of energy among harmonics exhibit individuality. Recognition between the birds must be based on a multiparametric analysis, taking into account both spectral and temporal features of the calls. Indeed, no single parameter was sufficient to discriminate between individual birds used in my re-search. In the noisy environment of the colony, the transmission of individuality in a message is improved by this multiparametric coding, which can be considered as an ad-aptation to these extreme acoustic conditions. Moreover, the study revealed numerous acoustic convergences with another colonial bird species, the Emperor Penguin Aptenodytes forsteri, and both species seemed to use the same method to encode individuality in their vocalizations. The Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus ruber breeds in large and dense colonies, often of thousands of individuals. They are noisy birds, and vocalizations are very important in their social relationships (Brown 1958, Studer-Thiersch 1967, 19 74, Cramp 19 77). Vocal communication may allow in-dividual recognition, especially during breeding (Studer- |
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