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Vocal communication in wild chimpanzees: a call rate study.

Crunchant, A-S, Stewart, FA and Piel, AK (2021) Vocal communication in wild chimpanzees: a call rate study. PeerJ, 9. ISSN 2167-8359

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Abstract

Background: Patterns of vocal communication have implications for species conservation: a change in calling behaviour can, for instance, reflect a disturbed habitat. More importantly, call rate is a parameter that allows conservation planners to convert call density into animal density, when detecting calls with a passive acoustic monitoring system (PAM). Methods: We investigated chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) call rate during the late dry season in the Issa Valley, western Tanzania by conducting focal follows. We examined the socio-ecological factors that influence call production rate of savanna woodland chimpanzees. Results: We found that sex, proportion of time spent in a vegetation type, proportion of time spent travelling, time of the day, party size and swollen parous female presence had a significant effect on the call rate. Call rate differed among the different demographic classes with subadult and adult males vocalising twice as often as the subadult and adult females and three times as often as the juveniles. Applications: The use of PAM and recent statistical developments to estimate animal density is promising but relies on our knowing individual call rate, often not available for many species. With the improvement in automatic call detection, we anticipate that PAM will increasingly be broadly applied to primates but also across taxa, for conservation.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: 06 Biological Sciences, 11 Medical and Health Sciences
Subjects: Q Science > QH Natural history
Q Science > QL Zoology
Divisions: Biological & Environmental Sciences (from Sep 19)
Publisher: PeerJ
Related URLs:
Date Deposited: 18 Nov 2021 12:21
Last Modified: 18 Nov 2021 12:30
DOI or ID number: 10.7717/peerj.12326
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15802
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