Context-dependent variation in meerkat short note calls reflects emotional arousal
猫鼬短音叫声的语境依赖性变化反映了情绪唤醒
Abstract
Many animals produce the same call type in distinct contexts, yet acoustic variation can encode additional information, such as the producers’ emotional state. By doing so, animals increase their capacity to communicate within potentially limited vocal repertoires. Meerkats, Suricata suricatta, produce various types of short note calls during distinct behavioural contexts; sunning, i.e. basking in the sun, and sentinel, i.e. cooperative vigilance. These two contexts likely vary in underlying emotional arousal. We first investigated if heart rate differed between sunning and sentinel contexts, indicating potential variation in arousal states. Second, we tested if calls produced during sunning and sentinel vary in production rate, call type and acoustic structure. We implanted wild meerkats with heart rate loggers and recorded their behaviour and vocalisations. We found that sentinel behaviour was associated with higher heart rates and call rates, indicating increased affective arousal. The acoustic structure of calls produced during sentinel were consistent with predictions of increased arousal, compared to calls produced during sunning, showing increased jitter, shorter duration, and more abrupt in onset. Overall, our results suggest higher emotional arousal during sentinel behaviour than sunning, reflected in cardiac activity, call rate and acoustic variation. Our results highlight that even within short, seemingly simple vocalisations, acoustic variation can enhance the amount of information transferred.
摘要：
许多动物在不同的环境中产生相同的叫声类型，但声学变化可以编码额外的信息，如生产者的情绪状态。通过这样做，动物可以在可能有限的声音范围内提高交流能力。猫鼬（Suricata suricatta）在不同的行为环境中会发出各种类型的短音叫声；晒太阳，即晒太阳，哨兵，即合作警戒。这两种情况可能在潜在的情绪唤醒方面有所不同。我们首先研究了在阳光照射和哨兵环境下心率是否不同，这表明唤醒状态的潜在变化。其次，我们测试了在日晒和哨兵期间产生的叫声在生产率、叫声类型和声学结构方面是否存在差异。我们给野生猫鼬植入了心率记录仪，并记录了它们的行为和叫声。我们发现哨兵行为与较高的心率和呼叫率有关，表明情感唤醒增加。与晒太阳时发出的叫声相比，哨兵期间发出的叫声的声学结构与觉醒增强的预测一致，表现出抖动增加、持续时间缩短和发作更突然。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，哨兵行为期间的情绪唤醒高于阳光照射，这反映在心脏活动、呼叫率和声学变化上。研究结果表明，即使在短而看似简单的发声中，声学变化也可以增强传递的信息量。
关键词：
StarOddi心率温度记录仪，动物植入芯片。
