Tripp Joel A, Phelps Steven M
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
Current Affiliation: Program of Neuroscience, Carleton College, Northfield, MN.
bioRxiv. 2024 Nov 21:2024.11.19.624417. doi: 10.1101/2024.11.19.624417.
Acoustic displays are conspicuous behaviors common across diverse animal taxa. They have long been studied in behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Most of these investigations, however, have focused on male display. For species in which both sexes display, correcting this bias will lead to a fuller understanding of the evolution and function of these behaviors. In this study, we investigated the role of vocal advertisement display in female Alston's singing mice (). Singing mice are small muroid rodents of the family Cricetidae, native to high altitude cloud forests of Central America. Females and males both produce elaborate advertisement songs used in mate attraction and intra-sexual competition. Prior studies have largely focused on male behavior, though we recently found that both sexes dramatically increase their rate of singing and song duration in response to playback of conspecific male song. Here, we tested how mice of both sexes adjust their song effort in response to female song playback. Our results show that, like male song, female song elicits robust increases in song effort from both female and male mice. This study reveals additional social contexts that promote high song effort in this species, while raising additional questions about the role of song in communication within and between the sexes.
声学展示是多种动物类群中常见的显著行为。它们长期以来一直是行为生态学、进化生物学和神经科学的研究对象。然而，这些研究大多集中在雄性展示上。对于两性都有展示行为的物种而言，纠正这种偏差将有助于更全面地理解这些行为的进化和功能。在本研究中，我们调查了发声广告展示在雌性奥氏歌鼠中的作用。歌鼠是仓鼠科小型鼠形啮齿动物，原产于中美洲的高海拔云雾森林。雌性和雄性都会发出用于吸引配偶和同性竞争的精心制作的广告歌曲。先前的研究主要集中在雄性行为上，不过我们最近发现，两性在听到同种雄性歌曲回放时，歌唱频率和歌曲时长都会显著增加。在此，我们测试了两性小鼠如何根据雌性歌曲回放来调整它们的歌唱力度。我们的结果表明，与雄性歌曲一样，雌性歌曲也会引发雌性和雄性小鼠歌唱力度的显著增加。这项研究揭示了促进该物种高歌唱力度的其他社会背景，同时也引发了关于歌曲在两性内部和两性之间交流中作用的更多问题。
