Function of Acoustic Signal Interactions

许多雄性动物会发出有节奏的歌声来吸引雌性动物交配。雄性通常是聚集的，并且结构化的合唱导致雄性与邻居的叫声交替或同步。有几种假说被用来解释合唱团的结构，例如，男性合作，以免混淆女性。这些想法并没有被证明是正确的，另一种选择，即雄性竞争干扰竞争对手的电话，得到了支持。这种竞争是由一种广泛的（包括人类）优先效应驱动的，即雌性只对领先的叫声做出反应。因此，雄性会竞相发出领头的叫声。我们目前还不知道这些优先效应和男性信号策略在自然合唱中的作用，以及女性通过与领先的呼叫者交配而获得的好处（即更好的基因）。数字技术的进步将允许记录大自然中的大合唱和分析相对的呼叫定时策略。利用计算机模拟合唱的多扬声器回放实验将被用来研究自然条件下雌性的交配偏好。这项研究的结果将增加我们对自然界中性选择的运作和动物交流系统进化的理解。确定的方差，密度等的影响，女性的喜好和男性信号将帮助我们更好地了解机制，保持种群中的遗传变异，一个重要的问题，进化和保护生物学。

Many male animals produce rhythmic songs that attract females for mating. Males are often aggregated and structured choruses result where males either alternate or synchronize their calls with those of neighbors. Several hypotheses have been forwarded to explain chorus structure, suggesting, for example, that males cooperate so as not to confuse females. These ideas have not proved true and an alternative, that males compete to jam competitors calls, has been supported. This competition is driven by a widespread (including humans) precedence effect whereby females respond to only leading calls. Males, then, compete to produce leading calls. We do not currently know how these precedence effects and male signaling strategies function in natural choruses and what benefit females derive (i.e. better genes) by mating with leading callers. Advances in digital technology will allow recording of large choruses in nature and analysis of relative call-timing strategies. Multi-speaker playback experiments utilizing computer-simulated choruses will be used to examine female mating preferences under natural conditions.The findings of this study will increase our understanding of the operation of sexual selection in nature and the evolution of animal communication systems. Determination of the variance in, and the effects of density etc. upon, female preferences and male signaling will help us understand better the mechanisms that maintain genetic variance in populations, an issue important to both evolutionary and conservation biology.