Daurian pika (Ochotona dauurica) alarm calls: individual acoustic variation in a lagomorph with audible through ultrasonic vocalizations

Colonial lagomorphs warn conspecifics of potential danger with alarm calls encoding information about attributes of presumptive predators as well as the caller. In this study, we show that alarm calls of Daurian pikas, Ochotona dauurica (Pallas, 1776), encode information about caller identity. We re...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of mammalogy 2021-06, Vol.102 (3), p.947-959
Main Authors: Volodin, Ilya A., Volodina, Elena V., Frey, Roland, Karaseva, Kseniya D., Kirilyuk, Vadim E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
acoustic variables
alarm call
audible vocalization
individual differences
Lagomorpha
mammal
manual and semiautomatic measurements
pika
ultrasonic frequency range
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Colonial lagomorphs warn conspecifics of potential danger with alarm calls encoding information about attributes of presumptive predators as well as the caller. In this study, we show that alarm calls of Daurian pikas, Ochotona dauurica (Pallas, 1776), encode information about caller identity. We recorded the alarm calls produced toward a surrogate predator (researcher), slowly moving (0.5–1 km/h) between densely distributed colonies. The alarm calls of most (32 of the 35) callers started in the ultrasonic range at 22.41 kHz on average and rapidly decreased to 3.88 kHz on average at call end. Call duration was very short (0.057 s on average). The accuracy of classifying alarm calls to correct callers with discriminant function analysis (DFA) was 93.71% for the manually measured set of 12 acoustic variables and 95.43% for the semiautomatically measured set of 12 acoustic variables; in both cases exceeding the level of chance (17.28% or 17.33%, respectively). Nonlinear vocal phenomena (biphonations) only were detected in one individual. We discuss the relationship between vocal traits, individuality, vocal production mechanisms, and functions, of pika alarm calls. We propose a potential divergence of alarm calls in Asian pikas to high-frequency whistles (> 20 kHz in Daurian pikas) and in American pikas to low-frequency emissions (0.4–1.3 kHz in Ochotona princeps) during the evolutionary radiation of pikas at the center of the origin of lagomorphs in East Asia and their subsequent geographic dispersal.
ISSN:0022-2372
1545-1542
DOI:10.1093/jmammal/gyab048