Mate recognition and expression of affective state in croop calls of Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita)

Northern Bald Ibis are socially monogamous and year-round colonial birds with a moderate repertoire of calls. Their 'croop', for example, is used during greeting of mates, but also during agonistic encounters, and provides an ideal case to study whether calls are revealing with respect to...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-02, Vol.9 (2), p.e88265-e88265
Main Authors: Szipl, Georgine, Boeckle, Markus, Werner, Sinja A B, Kotrschal, Kurt
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic properties
Acoustics
Affect
Animal cognition
Animals
Behavior
Biology
Birds
Birds - physiology
Emotional behavior
Emotions
Endangered & extinct species
Female
Fundamental frequency
Geronticus eremita
Individual differences
Male
Mate recognition
Mating Preference, Animal
Monogamy
Motivation
Parameter identification
Parameters
Phonetics
Physics
Playback
Playbacks
Recognition
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Studies
Vocalization behavior
Vocalization, Animal
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Northern Bald Ibis are socially monogamous and year-round colonial birds with a moderate repertoire of calls. Their 'croop', for example, is used during greeting of mates, but also during agonistic encounters, and provides an ideal case to study whether calls are revealing with respect to motivational states. We recorded croop calls in a semi-tame and free-roaming flock of Northern Bald Ibis in Austria, and analysed the vocal structure to identify parameters (e.g. call duration, fundamental frequency) potentially differing between social contexts, sexes and individuals. Additionally, we conducted playback experiments to test whether mated pairs would discriminate each other by their greeting croops. Acoustic features showed highly variable temporal and structural parameters. Almost all calls could be classified correctly and assigned to the different social contexts and sexes. Classification results of greeting croops were less clear for individuality. However, incubating individuals looked up more often and longer in response to playbacks of the greeting calls of their mate than to other colony members, indicating mate recognition. We show that acoustic parameters of agonistic and greeting croops contain features that may indicate the expression of affective states, and that greeting croops encode individual differences that are sufficient for individual recognition.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0088265