Mother Vocal Recognition in Antarctic Fur Seal Arctocephalus gazella Pups: A Two-Step Process.

• Published in: PLOS ONE
• Main Authors: Aubin, Thierry, Jouventin, Pierre, Charrier, Isabelle
• Other Authors: Institut des Neurosciences Paris-Saclay (NeuroPSI), Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE), Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques (Montpellier SupAgro)-École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD France-Sud )-Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier (Montpellier SupAgro)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2015
• Subjects: [SDV.NEU.NB]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC]/Neurobiology; [SDV.NEU.PC]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC]/Psychology and behavior; [SDV.NEU.SC]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC]/Cognitive Sciences; Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctic Fur Seal; Antarctic Fur Seals; Arctocephalus gazella
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-01240329; https://hal.science/hal-01240329/document; https://hal.science/hal-01240329/file/pone.0134513.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134513

International audience In otariids, mother's recognition by pups is essential to their survival since females nurse exclusively their own young and can be very aggressive towards non-kin. Antarctic fur seal, Arctocephalus gazella, come ashore to breed and form dense colonies. During the 4-month lactation period, females alternate foraging trips at sea with suckling period ashore. On each return to the colony, females and pups first use vocalizations to find each other among several hundred conspecifics and olfaction is used as a final check. Such vocal identification has to be highly efficient. In this present study, we investigated the components of the individual vocal signature used by pups to identify their mothers by performing playback experiments on pups with synthetic signals. We thus tested the efficiency of this individual vocal signature by performing propagation tests and by testing pups at different playback distances. Pups use both amplitude and frequency modulations to identify their mother's voice, as well as the energy spectrum. Propagation tests showed that frequency modulations propagated reliably up to 64m, whereas amplitude modulations and spectral content greatly were highly degraded for distances over 8m. Playback on pups at different distances suggested that the individual identification is a two-step process: at long range, pups identified first the frequency modulation pattern of their mother's calls, and other components of the vocal signature at closer range. The individual vocal recognition system developed by Antarctic fur seals is well adapted to face the main constraint of finding kin in a crowd.