Mentor/s
Dr. Thomas Terleph
Participation Type
Poster
Abstract
Gibbons are unique among the apes because mated pairs regularly sing in organized duets, and because the male’s song phrases increase in complexity during duets and solo bouts. These increases in complexity have not been systematically quantified for any gibbon species. Here we describe and quantify these changes to the male song, from recordings of a wild population of white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar). We found that the number of notes in male coda phrases increased over the course of song bouts, as did their maximum fundamental frequency. Our analysis of individual syllable types within the coda phrase revealed that male-specific note types, trill and quaver notes, increased in amount and in duration, respectively, within song bouts.
College and Major available
Biology
Location
University Commons
Start Day/Time
4-21-2017 1:00 PM
End Day/Time
4-21-2017 3:00 PM
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Song Complexity Increases During White-Handed Gibbon (Hylobates lar) Duets
University Commons
Gibbons are unique among the apes because mated pairs regularly sing in organized duets, and because the male’s song phrases increase in complexity during duets and solo bouts. These increases in complexity have not been systematically quantified for any gibbon species. Here we describe and quantify these changes to the male song, from recordings of a wild population of white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar). We found that the number of notes in male coda phrases increased over the course of song bouts, as did their maximum fundamental frequency. Our analysis of individual syllable types within the coda phrase revealed that male-specific note types, trill and quaver notes, increased in amount and in duration, respectively, within song bouts.
