Baotic Anton, Stoeger Angela S
Mammal Communication Lab, Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
PLoS One. 2017 May 10;12(5):e0177411. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177411. eCollection 2017.
This study used the source and filter theory approach to analyse sex differences in the acoustic features of African elephant (Loxodonta africana) low-frequency rumbles produced in social contexts ('social rumbles'). Permuted discriminant function analysis revealed that rumbles contain sufficient acoustic information to predict the sex of a vocalizing individual. Features primarily related to the vocalizer's size, i.e. fundamental frequency variables and vocal tract resonant frequencies, differed significantly between the sexes. Yet, controlling for age and size effects, our results indicate that the pronounced sexual size dimorphism in African elephants is partly, but not exclusively, responsible for sexual differences in social rumbles. This provides a scientific foundation for future work investigating the perceptual and functional relevance of specific acoustic characteristics in African elephant vocal sexual communication.
本研究采用源滤波理论方法，分析了非洲象（Loxodonta africana）在社交情境中发出的低频隆隆声（“社交隆隆声”）的声学特征中的性别差异。置换判别函数分析表明，隆隆声包含足够的声学信息来预测发声个体的性别。主要与发声者体型相关的特征，即基频变量和声道共振频率，在两性之间存在显著差异。然而，在控制年龄和体型影响后，我们的结果表明，非洲象明显的两性体型差异只是部分而非完全导致了社交隆隆声的性别差异。这为未来研究非洲象声音性别交流中特定声学特征的感知和功能相关性的工作提供了科学基础。
