Slobodchikoff C N, Placer J
Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2006 May;119(5 Pt 1):3153-60. doi: 10.1121/1.2185489.
Acoustic structures of sound in Gunnison's prairie dog alarm calls are described, showing how these acoustic structures may encode information about three different predator species (red-tailed hawk-Buteo jamaicensis; domestic dog-Canis familaris; and coyote-Canis latrans). By dividing each alarm call into 25 equal-sized partitions and using resonant frequencies within each partition, commonly occurring acoustic structures were identified as components of alarm calls for the three predators. Although most of the acoustic structures appeared in alarm calls elicited by all three predator species, the frequency of occurrence of these acoustic structures varied among the alarm calls for the different predators, suggesting that these structures encode identifying information for each of the predators. A classification analysis of alarm calls elicited by each of the three predators showed that acoustic structures could correctly classify 67% of the calls elicited by domestic dogs, 73% of the calls elicited by coyotes, and 99% of the calls elicited by red-tailed hawks. The different distributions of acoustic structures associated with alarm calls for the three predator species suggest a duality of function, one of the design elements of language listed by Hockett [in Animal Sounds and Communication, edited by W. E. Lanyon and W. N. Tavolga (American Institute of Biological Sciences, Washington, DC, 1960), pp. 392-430].
描述了甘尼森草原犬鼠警报叫声中的声音声学结构，展示了这些声学结构如何编码有关三种不同捕食者物种（红尾鹰——赤肩鵟；家犬——犬属；郊狼——犬属）的信息。通过将每个警报叫声划分为25个大小相等的部分，并使用每个部分内的共振频率，常见的声学结构被确定为三种捕食者警报叫声的组成部分。尽管大多数声学结构出现在由所有三种捕食者物种引发的警报叫声中，但这些声学结构的出现频率在针对不同捕食者的警报叫声中有所不同，这表明这些结构编码了每种捕食者的识别信息。对由三种捕食者各自引发的警报叫声进行的分类分析表明，声学结构能够正确分类67%的家犬引发的叫声、73%的郊狼引发的叫声以及99%的红尾鹰引发的叫声。与三种捕食者物种的警报叫声相关的声学结构的不同分布表明了一种功能二元性，这是霍凯特[在由W. E. 兰扬和W. N. 塔沃尔加编辑的《动物声音与通讯》（美国生物科学研究所，华盛顿特区，1960年），第392 - 430页]列出的语言设计元素之一。
