Schneiderová Irena, Policht Richard
Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, Prague, 128-44, Czech Republic.
Naturwissenschaften. 2012 Jan;99(1):55-64. doi: 10.1007/s00114-011-0870-4. Epub 2011 Dec 10.
The Anatolian ground squirrel Spermophilus xanthoprymnus like other ground-dwelling sciurids, emits alarm calls in the presence of predators. In this study, we provide a description of the acoustic structure of alarm call of this species and compare it to those of two closely related species, the Taurus ground squirrel Spermophilus taurensis and the European ground squirrel Spermophilus citellus. The alarm call of S. xanthoprymnus is a tonal sound mostly consisting of two different elements-the first element has low frequency modulation while the second element is highly frequency modulated. A similar basic structure can be found in the alarm calls of some other old world ground squirrel species of the genus Spermophilus, including S. taurensis and S. citellus. Despite this similarity, we found that these three species can be clearly distinguished on the basis of their alarm calls. Differences in the acoustic structure of S. xanthoprymnus and S. taurensis calls are especially remarkable, as these two species were considered to be conspecific until 2007. S. xanthoprymnus and S. taurensis were also demonstrated to have closer acoustic similarity, which is in contrast to results based on molecular data indicating that S. taurensis is most closely related to S. citellus.
安纳托利亚地松鼠（Spermophilus xanthoprymnus）与其他地栖松鼠科动物一样，在有捕食者出现时会发出警报叫声。在本研究中，我们描述了该物种警报叫声的声学结构，并将其与两种近缘物种——金牛座地松鼠（Spermophilus taurensis）和欧洲地松鼠（Spermophilus citellus）的警报叫声进行比较。黄腹土拨鼠（S. xanthoprymnus）的警报叫声是一种音调声音，主要由两种不同元素组成——第一个元素具有低频调制，而第二个元素具有高频调制。在松鼠属的其他一些旧世界地松鼠物种的警报叫声中也可以发现类似的基本结构，包括金牛座地松鼠和欧洲地松鼠。尽管存在这种相似性，但我们发现这三个物种可以根据它们的警报叫声清楚地区分出来。黄腹土拨鼠和金牛座地松鼠叫声的声学结构差异尤为显著，因为在2007年之前这两个物种被认为是同种。黄腹土拨鼠和金牛座地松鼠也被证明具有更密切的声学相似性，这与基于分子数据的结果形成对比，分子数据表明金牛座地松鼠与欧洲地松鼠关系最为密切。
