Sasahara Kazutoshi, Ikegami Takashi
Laboratory for Biolinguistics, RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI), 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
Artif Life. 2007 Summer;13(3):259-77. doi: 10.1162/artl.2007.13.3.259.
Animals use diverse forms of communication, from sound signals to body postures. Recent ethological studies have reported a unique syntactic communication of a songbird, the Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata var. domestica). Male Bengalese finches sing complex courtship songs, which can be reconstructed by finite automata, and female Bengalese finches prefer complex songs, as opposed to monotonous or random ones. These facts suggest that the song syntaxes of male birds may have evolved as a result of sexual selection by female birds. Inspired by this hypothesis, we developed a communication model that is a system coupling different types of automaton, one for song production by males and another for song evaluation by females. We applied this model to study the evolution of syntactic animal communication in terms of the self-organization of coevolving automata. Three types of courting strategies as well as a relationship between the song syntax and female preference emerged. We argue that despite the simple communication involved, the complexity and diversity of song syntaxes can evolve via diverse female preferences.
动物使用多种交流方式，从声音信号到身体姿势。最近的行为学研究报道了一种鸣禽—— Bengalese 雀（Lonchura striata var. domestica）独特的句法交流。雄性 Bengalese 雀会唱复杂的求偶歌曲，这些歌曲可以用有限自动机来重构，而雌性 Bengalese 雀更喜欢复杂的歌曲，而不是单调或随机的歌曲。这些事实表明，雄鸟的歌曲句法可能是雌鸟性选择的结果而进化而来的。受这一假设的启发，我们开发了一种交流模型，该模型是一个耦合不同类型自动机的系统，一个用于雄性的歌曲生成，另一个用于雌性的歌曲评估。我们应用这个模型，从共同进化自动机的自组织角度研究句法动物交流的进化。出现了三种求偶策略以及歌曲句法与雌性偏好之间的关系。我们认为，尽管涉及的交流很简单，但歌曲句法的复杂性和多样性可以通过不同的雌性偏好而进化。
