How small could a pup sound? The physical bases of signaling body size in harbor seals

Current Zoology
Andrea RavignaniBart de Boer

Abstract

Vocal communication is a crucial aspect of animal behavior. The mechanism which most mammals use to vocalize relies on three anatomical components. First, air overpressure is generated inside the lower vocal tract. Second, as the airstream goes through the glottis, sound is produced via vocal fold vibration. Third, this sound is further filtered by the geometry and length of the upper vocal tract. Evidence from mammalian anatomy and bioacoustics suggests that some of these three components may covary with an animal's body size. The framework provided by acoustic allometry suggests that, because vocal tract length (VTL) is more strongly constrained by the growth of the body than vocal fold length (VFL), VTL generates more reliable acoustic cues to an animal's size. This hypothesis is often tested acoustically but rarely anatomically, especially in pinnipeds. Here, we test the anatomical bases of the acoustic allometry hypothesis in harbor seal pupsPhoca vitulina. We dissected and measured vocal tract, vocal folds, and other anatomical features of 15 harbor seals post-mortem. We found that, while VTL correlates with body size, VFL does not. This suggests that, while body growth puts anatomical constraints on how vocalizations are...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 2, 2018·Current Zoology·Maxime Garcia, Livio Favaro
Jul 8, 2020·Biology Letters·Maxime Garcia, Andrea Ravignani
Jan 5, 2018·BMC Research Notes·Andrea Ravignani
Jan 31, 2019·Current Zoology·Andrea RavignaniBart de Boer
Sep 9, 2020·The Journal of Experimental Biology·Arlo AdamsStacey A Skoretz
Nov 2, 2021·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Laura Torres BordaAndrea Ravignani

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