Function of Acoustic Signal Interactions

声学信号相互作用的功能

• 批准号: 9816708
• 负责人: Michael Greenfield
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-02-01 至 2003-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9816708&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Function; Acoustic; Signal; Interactions

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.

许多雄性动物发出有节奏的歌声来吸引雌性交配。雄性经常聚集在一起，有组织的合唱导致雄性交替或同步与邻居的叫声。有人提出了几个假说来解释合唱结构，例如，雄性合作是为了不让雌性感到困惑。这些想法并没有被证明是正确的，另一种说法是，雄性会通过竞争来干扰对手的叫声，这种说法得到了支持。这种竞争是由一种广泛的（包括人类）优先效应驱动的，即雌性只对领导的叫声做出反应。然后雄性会竞争发出领头的叫声。我们目前还不知道这些优先效应和雄性信号策略在自然合唱中是如何起作用的，也不知道雌性通过与领先的呼叫者交配获得了什么好处（即更好的基因）。数字技术的进步将允许录制大型自然合唱，并分析相关的呼叫定时策略。利用计算机模拟合唱的多扬声器回放实验将用于研究自然条件下女性的交配偏好。这项研究的发现将增加我们对自然界性选择的运作和动物交流系统的进化的理解。确定雌性偏好和雄性信号的差异以及密度等因素的影响，将有助于我们更好地理解维持种群遗传差异的机制，这对进化和保护生物学都是一个重要的问题。