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Acoustic Communication: Advancing Dominion on Land, in the Skies, and...
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Acoustic Communication: Advancing Dominion on Land, in the Skies, and under Water

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 April 2023) | Viewed by 1404

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Jagmeet S. Kanwal

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Physiology & Behavior Lab, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
Interests: audiovocal social communication; echolocation; attention; learning; decision making; bats; zebrafish; speech and music in humans

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The acoustic landscape is dynamic and can be cluttered as well as complex. As animals established dominion over different types of habitats, the use of sounds to gather information and communicate with others rapidly and reliably represented a final frontier. How they adapted structurally and functionally to use sounds for self-preservation remains an area of active investigation and new discoveries. By taking an integrative and comparative approach, we can best appreciate both the diversity and commonalities of acoustic communication by animals thriving in terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial environments, each of which presents unique challenges. This Special Issue aims to establish the fact that acoustic communication is a key evolutionary advance that involves rapid transduction and reliable information extraction, discrimination, and recognition, allowing each species to occupy a frequency-range-specific niche of sounds or mechanical vibrations. The first part of this Special Issue series will focus on adaptations in mammals. Cutting-edge research topics include, but are not limited to, mechanisms for acoustic resonance and active filtering, sensory tuning and gating, audio–vocal coupling, and specialized behavioral and cognitive adaptations, such as mimicry, the use of alarm calls, and singing, which together enable territorial aggression, defense, and reproductive success.

Dr. Jagmeet S. Kanwal 
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • acoustics
  • alarm calls
  • audio-vocal coupling
  • auditory attention
  • dialects
  • mimicry and deception
  • signal and feature extraction
  • social behavior
  • song
  • sound localization and tracking

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

12 pages, 2871 KiB  
Article
Seismic Signaling for Detection of Empty Tunnels in the Plateau Zokor, Eospalax baileyi
by Kechi Dong, Jianwei Zhou, Feiyu Zhang, Longming Dong, Bin Chu, Rui Hua and Limin Hua
Animals 2023, 13(2), 240; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13020240 - 09 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1061
Abstract
There are considerable challenges involved in studying the behavior of subterranean rodents owing to the underground nature of their ecotope. Seismic communication plays a crucial role in the behavior of subterranean rodents, particularly solitary ones. The plateau zokor (Eospalax baileyi), a [...] Read more.
There are considerable challenges involved in studying the behavior of subterranean rodents owing to the underground nature of their ecotope. Seismic communication plays a crucial role in the behavior of subterranean rodents, particularly solitary ones. The plateau zokor (Eospalax baileyi), a solitary subterranean rodent species endemic to the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, will usually occupy empty neighboring tunnels in order to extend their territory. Little is known, however, about the process of territorial occupation or the function of animal communication when occupation is taking place. Based on previous studies of subterranean rodent communication, we hypothesized that plateau zokors use seismic signals to detect neighboring tunnels and then occupy them when it was found their neighbors were absent. To test this, we placed artificial tunnels close to active original zokor tunnels to simulate the availability of an empty neighboring tunnel, and then the seismic signals when a zokor chose to occupy the empty artificial tunnel were recorded. The results showed that the frequency of zokors occupying artificial empty tunnels within 48 h was 7/8, In all of these instances, the zokors generated seismic signals before and after occupation of the empty artificial tunnel. The number of seismic signals generated by the zokors increased significantly (p = 0.024) when they detected and occupied the artificial tunnels, compared to those generated in their original tunnels without the presence of an artificial tunnel alongside. Inside the original tunnels, the inter-pulse time interval of the seismic signals was significantly higher (p < 0.001), the peak frequency of these signals was significantly higher (p < 0.01), and the energy of the signals was significantly lower (p = 0.006), compared with those when an artificial tunnel was positioned next to the original. The results of this study suggest that plateau zokors first generate seismic signals to detect empty neighboring tunnels and that they are empty. In the absence of neighbor plateau zokors, they occupy the empty tunnels to extend their own territory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acoustic Communication: Advancing Dominion on Land, in the Skies, and under Water)
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