How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals
Vocal communication is a crucial aspect of animal behavior. The mechanism which most mammals use to vocalize relies on three anatomical components. First, air overpressure is generated inside the lower vocal tract. Second, as the airstream goes through the glottis, sound is produced via vocal fold v...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5804196 2023-05-15T16:33:09+02:00 How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals Ravignani, Andrea Gross, Stephanie Garcia, Maxime Rubio-Garcia, Ana de Boer, Bart 2017-08 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804196/ https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zox026 en eng Oxford University Press http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804196/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cz/zox026 © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com CC-BY-NC Special Column: Animal Vocal Communication: Function Structures and Production Mechanisms Text 2017 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zox026 2018-03-04T01:27:55Z Vocal communication is a crucial aspect of animal behavior. The mechanism which most mammals use to vocalize relies on three anatomical components. First, air overpressure is generated inside the lower vocal tract. Second, as the airstream goes through the glottis, sound is produced via vocal fold vibration. Third, this sound is further filtered by the geometry and length of the upper vocal tract. Evidence from mammalian anatomy and bioacoustics suggests that some of these three components may covary with an animal’s body size. The framework provided by acoustic allometry suggests that, because vocal tract length (VTL) is more strongly constrained by the growth of the body than vocal fold length (VFL), VTL generates more reliable acoustic cues to an animal’s size. This hypothesis is often tested acoustically but rarely anatomically, especially in pinnipeds. Here, we test the anatomical bases of the acoustic allometry hypothesis in harbor seal pups Phoca vitulina. We dissected and measured vocal tract, vocal folds, and other anatomical features of 15 harbor seals post-mortem. We found that, while VTL correlates with body size, VFL does not. This suggests that, while body growth puts anatomical constraints on how vocalizations are filtered by harbor seals’ vocal tract, no such constraints appear to exist on vocal folds, at least during puppyhood. It is particularly interesting to find anatomical constraints on harbor seals’ vocal tracts, the same anatomical region partially enabling pups to produce individually distinctive vocalizations. Text harbor seal Phoca vitulina PubMed Central (PMC) Current Zoology 63 4 457 465 |
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Special Column: Animal Vocal Communication: Function Structures and Production Mechanisms |
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Special Column: Animal Vocal Communication: Function Structures and Production Mechanisms Ravignani, Andrea Gross, Stephanie Garcia, Maxime Rubio-Garcia, Ana de Boer, Bart How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
topic_facet |
Special Column: Animal Vocal Communication: Function Structures and Production Mechanisms |
description |
Vocal communication is a crucial aspect of animal behavior. The mechanism which most mammals use to vocalize relies on three anatomical components. First, air overpressure is generated inside the lower vocal tract. Second, as the airstream goes through the glottis, sound is produced via vocal fold vibration. Third, this sound is further filtered by the geometry and length of the upper vocal tract. Evidence from mammalian anatomy and bioacoustics suggests that some of these three components may covary with an animal’s body size. The framework provided by acoustic allometry suggests that, because vocal tract length (VTL) is more strongly constrained by the growth of the body than vocal fold length (VFL), VTL generates more reliable acoustic cues to an animal’s size. This hypothesis is often tested acoustically but rarely anatomically, especially in pinnipeds. Here, we test the anatomical bases of the acoustic allometry hypothesis in harbor seal pups Phoca vitulina. We dissected and measured vocal tract, vocal folds, and other anatomical features of 15 harbor seals post-mortem. We found that, while VTL correlates with body size, VFL does not. This suggests that, while body growth puts anatomical constraints on how vocalizations are filtered by harbor seals’ vocal tract, no such constraints appear to exist on vocal folds, at least during puppyhood. It is particularly interesting to find anatomical constraints on harbor seals’ vocal tracts, the same anatomical region partially enabling pups to produce individually distinctive vocalizations. |
format |
Text |
author |
Ravignani, Andrea Gross, Stephanie Garcia, Maxime Rubio-Garcia, Ana de Boer, Bart |
author_facet |
Ravignani, Andrea Gross, Stephanie Garcia, Maxime Rubio-Garcia, Ana de Boer, Bart |
author_sort |
Ravignani, Andrea |
title |
How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
title_short |
How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
title_full |
How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
title_fullStr |
How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
title_full_unstemmed |
How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
title_sort |
how small could a pup sound? the physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals |
publisher |
Oxford University Press |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804196/ https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zox026 |
genre |
harbor seal Phoca vitulina |
genre_facet |
harbor seal Phoca vitulina |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804196/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cz/zox026 |
op_rights |
© The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY-NC |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zox026 |
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Current Zoology |
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63 |
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4 |
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457 |
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465 |
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