Selective habituation shapes acoustic predator recognition in harbour seals

Predation is a major force in shaping the behaviour of animals, so that precise identification of predators will confer substantial selective advantages on animals that serve as food to others. Because experience with a predator can be lethal, early researchers studying birds suggested that predator recognition does not require learning. However, a predator image that can be modified by learning and experience will be advantageous in situations where cues associated with the predator are highly variable or change over time. In this study, we investigated the response of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) to the underwater calls of different populations of killer whales (Orcinus orca). We found that the seals responded strongly to the calls of mammal-eating killer whales and unfamiliar fish-eating killer whales but not to the familiar calls of the local fish-eating population. This demonstrates that wild harbour seals are capable of complex acoustic discrimination and that they modify their predator image by selectively habituating to the calls of harmless killer whales. Fear in these animals is therefore focused on local threats by learning and experience.     

Mate fidelity and intra-lineage polygyny in greater horseshoe bats

Mating strategies that lead to increased kinship within socially cooperative groups may offer inclusive fitness benefits to individuals, but can also result in higher levels of inbreeding. Here we show in a sexually segregated bat species that females avoid this conflict through two mating behaviours. First, most females revisit and breed with specific, individual males across years, so that their single offspring born in different years are full siblings. Second, relatives in the maternal line, including mothers and daughters, share breeding partners (intra-lineage polygyny) more often than expected by chance. Although these behaviours increased levels of co-ancestry among colony members, there was no concomitant rise in inbreeding. We suggest that when females engage in mate fidelity and intra-lineage polygyny, kin ties among female roost mates will be strengthened, thereby potentially contributing to social group cohesiveness. Our findings reveal the hidden complexity that can underlie polygynous breeding, and highlight a new potential route by which female mate choice could influence social evolution.     

Kin selection and cooperative courtship in wild turkeys

In the few species of birds in which males form display partnerships to attract females, one male secures most or all of the copulations. This leads to the question of why subordinate males help in the absence of observable reproductive benefits. Hamilton's concept of kin selection, whereby individuals can benefit indirectly by helping a relative, was a crucial breakthrough for understanding apparently altruistic systems. However in the only direct test of kin selection in coordinated display partnerships, partners were unrelated, discounting kin selection as an explanation for the evolution of cooperation. Here I show, using genetic measures of relatedness and reproductive success, that kin selection can explain the evolution of cooperative courtship in wild turkeys. Subordinate (helper) males do not themselves reproduce, but their indirect fitness as calculated by Hamilton's rule more than offsets the cost of helping. This result confirms a textbook example of kin selection that until now has been controversial and also extends recent findings of male relatedness on avian leks by quantifying the kin-selected benefits gained by non-reproducing males.     

鸣禽惊吓叫声与刺激中脑丘间复合体背内侧核诱发叫声的比较

中脑丘间复合体背内侧核（DM）是发声的基本中枢，刺激DM核团诱发叫声的语图表现为单柱状，频率可高达12000Hz以上，在语图中表现出具鸣肌特性的噪音与乐音相混合，刺激左，右侧DM诱发的叫声，各项声学指标没有明显的差异，但不同种类的鸟之间在波形，频带范围上则有不同，惊吓叫声的语图也表现为柱状，各个频民在的范围较宽，乐声与噪声共存等特点，但不同种类的鸟有明显的种族差异，这表明惊吓叫声与刺激DM核团诱发的叫声具有种属差异，但同种之间有相似性。     

Social evolution: kin preference in a social microbe

Kin recognition helps cooperation to evolve in many animals, but it is uncertain whether microorganisms can also use it to focus altruistic behaviour on relatives. Here we show that the social amoeba Dictyostelium purpureum prefers to form groups with its own kin in situations where some individuals die to assist others. By directing altruism towards kin, D. purpureum should generally avoid the costs of chimaerism experienced by the related D. discoideum.     

Cross-modal signaling in giant pandas

For solitary species that aggregate to breed, signals, such as sound or odor, transmitted across the landscape can play an important role in mate choice and coordinating breeding activity. Recent work on vocalizations of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), bleats and chirps that are emitted during periods of reproductive activity, has revealed that auditory communication in this species is more complicated and developed than once believed. However, playback experiments using these calls have recorded only a few behaviors over short observation times and the influence of these calls on the signaling behavior of receivers remains unknown. Here, we present results from a pilot study in which we played the bleats of male and female giant pandas in estrus to captive animals and measured vocal and chemical signaling response behavior. We found an increase in scent marking behavior, but not vocalizations, in males and females following the playback of calls made by members of the opposite sex in estrus. To our knowledge, this is the first study to detect a chemical communication response, which was marking, to an auditory signal in giant pandas. Our findings reveal a previously unknown relationship between acoustic and chemical signals in this high profile species and suggest that these two forms of signaling may be interdependent in the social lives of giant pandas.     

Animal behaviour: elephants are capable of vocal learning

There are a few mammalian species that can modify their vocalizations in response to auditory experience--for example, some marine mammals use vocal imitation for reproductive advertisement, as birds sometimes do. Here we describe two examples of vocal imitation by African savannah elephants, Loxodonta africana, a terrestrial mammal that lives in a complex fission-fusion society. Our findings favour a role for vocal imitation that has already been proposed for primates, birds, bats and marine mammals: it is a useful form of acoustic communication that helps to maintain individual-specific bonds within changing social groupings.     

Cooperation and conflict in quorum-sensing bacterial populations

It has been suggested that bacterial cells communicate by releasing and sensing small diffusible signal molecules in a process commonly known as quorum sensing (QS). It is generally assumed that QS is used to coordinate cooperative behaviours at the population level. However, evolutionary theory predicts that individuals who communicate and cooperate can be exploited. Here we examine the social evolution of QS experimentally in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and show that although QS can provide a benefit at the group level, exploitative individuals can avoid the cost of producing the QS signal or of performing the cooperative behaviour that is coordinated by QS, and can therefore spread. We also show that a solution to the problem of exploitation is kin selection, if interacting bacterial cells tend to be close relatives. These results show that the problem of exploitation, which has been the focus of considerable attention in animal communication, also arises in bacteria.     

Ultrasonic frogs show hyperacute phonotaxis to female courtship calls

Sound communication plays a vital role in frog reproduction, in which vocal advertisement is generally the domain of males. Females are typically silent, but in a few anuran species they can produce a feeble reciprocal call or rapping sounds during courtship. Males of concave-eared torrent frogs (Odorrana tormota) have demonstrated ultrasonic communication capacity. Although females of O. tormota have an unusually well-developed vocal production system, it is unclear whether or not they produce calls or are only passive partners in a communication system dominated by males. Here we show that before ovulation, gravid females of O. tormota emit calls that are distinct from males' advertisement calls, having higher fundamental frequencies and harmonics and shorter call duration. In the field and in a quiet, darkened indoor arena, these female calls evoke vocalizations and extraordinarily precise positive phonotaxis (a localization error of <1 degrees ), rivalling that of vertebrates with the highest localization acuity (barn owls, dolphins, elephants and humans). The localization accuracy of O. tormota is remarkable in light of their small head size (interaural distance of <1 cm), and suggests an additional selective advantage of high-frequency hearing beyond the ability to avoid masking by low-frequency background noise.     

历山自然保护区机关大院的繁殖鸟类

工作中对位于历山国家级自然保护区机关大院内的繁殖鸟类的特性及成效进行了观测研究．已知区内共有12种鸟类繁殖，其中留鸟5种，夏候鸟7种．     

Egg recognition and counting reduce costs of avian conspecific brood parasitism

Birds parasitized by interspecific brood parasites often adopt defences based on egg recognition but such behaviours are puzzlingly rare in species parasitized by members of the same species. Here I show that conspecific egg recognition is frequent, accurate and used in three defences that reduce the high costs of conspecific brood parasitism in American coots. Hosts recognized and rejected many parasitic eggs, reducing the fitness costs of parasitism by half. Recognition without rejection also occurred and some hosts banished parasitic eggs to inferior outer incubation positions. Clutch size comparisons revealed that females combine egg recognition and counting to make clutch size decisions--by counting their own eggs, while ignoring distinctive parasitic eggs, females avoid a maladaptive clutch size reduction. This is clear evidence that female birds use visual rather than tactile cues to regulate their clutch sizes, and provides a rare example of the ecological and evolutionary context of counting in animals.     

南流江河口湿地的鸟类研究

于1989～1990年、1992年、1995年、1997～2000年以及2004年1月,分别按季节先后考察南流江河口湿地的鸟类种类和数量。结果在南流江河口湿地共记录到158种鸟类,分别属于15目47科,其中水鸟有75种,陆生鸟类有83种。该地区的鸟类以冬候鸟为主。共80种,占种数的50．6％;留鸟、旅鸟、夏候鸟分别为32种、31种、15种,属于国家重点保护及国际协定保护的鸟类有123种,各占该地区鸟类种数的20.3％、19．7％、9.5％和77.9％。     

Cooperation and competition in pathogenic bacteria

Explaining altruistic cooperation is one of the greatest challenges for evolutionary biology. One solution to this problem is if costly cooperative behaviours are directed towards relatives. This idea of kin selection has been hugely influential and applied widely from microorganisms to vertebrates. However, a problem arises if there is local competition for resources, because this leads to competition between relatives, reducing selection for cooperation. Here we use an experimental evolution approach to test the effect of the scale of competition, and how it interacts with relatedness. The cooperative trait that we examine is the production of siderophores, iron-scavenging agents, in the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. As expected, our results show that higher levels of cooperative siderophore production evolve in the higher relatedness treatments. However, our results also show that more local competition selects for lower levels of siderophore production and that there is a significant interaction between relatedness and the scale of competition, with relatedness having less effect when the scale of competition is more local. More generally, the scale of competition is likely to be of particular importance for the evolution of cooperation in microorganisms, and also the virulence of pathogenic microorganisms, because cooperative traits such as siderophore production have an important role in determining virulence.     

Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members

Humans are an unusually prosocial species-we vote, give blood, recycle, give tithes and punish violators of social norms. Experimental evidence indicates that people willingly incur costs to help strangers in anonymous one-shot interactions, and that altruistic behaviour is motivated, at least in part, by empathy and concern for the welfare of others (hereafter referred to as other-regarding preferences). In contrast, cooperative behaviour in non-human primates is mainly limited to kin and reciprocating partners, and is virtually never extended to unfamiliar individuals. Here we present experimental tests of the existence of other-regarding preferences in non-human primates, and show that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) do not take advantage of opportunities to deliver benefits to familiar individuals at no material cost to themselves, suggesting that chimpanzee behaviour is not motivated by other-regarding preferences. Chimpanzees are among the primates most likely to demonstrate prosocial behaviours. They participate in a variety of collective activities, including territorial patrols, coalitionary aggression, cooperative hunting, food sharing and joint mate guarding. Consolation of victims of aggression and anecdotal accounts of solicitous treatment of injured individuals suggest that chimpanzees may feel empathy. Chimpanzees sometimes reject exchanges in which they receive less valuable rewards than others, which may be one element of a 'sense of fairness', but there is no evidence that they are averse to interactions in which they benefit more than others.     

鄱阳湖地区山地丘陵的鸟类调查

本文记录了鄱阳湖地区山地后陵的鸟类177种，其中繁殖鸟118种，有7种（亚种）为江西省首次记录。在118种繁殖鸟中，东洋界种类占66．1％，古北界种类占11．1％，广布性种类占22．8％。该文还就鸟类的区系组成及其特征进行了分析，并对资源的保护和开发利用提出了具体意见。     

Inheritance of stereotyped gibbon calls

Little is known about how vocal patterns develop in non-human primates, mainly because suitable controlled experiments are difficult to carry out on these animals. Results of isolation experiments and observations of interspecific hybrids suggest no greater role for vocal learning than exists in many other vertebrates, and less than has been found in birds. We have now studied vocal patterns of hybrids between white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) and pileated gibbons (Hylobates pileatus) in natural mixed-species groups, in a zone of interspecies contact in central Thailand, and in some captive mixed-species groups. We find that in female hybrids, the patterns of the loud and stereotyped 'great-calls' show no evidence of learning from parents, and appear to be under strong genetic control. Daughters maturing in groups with genetically unlike parents develop great-calls unlike those of their mothers, even though these calls develop only while the daughters sing simultaneously with their mothers.     

江西宜春地区鸟类区系初步研究

１９９３０１９９４年在江西省宜春地区进行鸟调查，本区鸟类计２４２种及亚种，隶属１９目４７科，１８种鸟类为江西省新纪录。留鸟１１５种及亚种（４７．５２％），夏候鸟４７种及亚种（１９．４２％），冬候鸟６０种及亚种（２４．７９％），旅鸟２０种及亚种（８．２６％）。其中森林灌丛鸟类１３６种及亚种（５６．２０％），平原田野鸟类６９种及亚种（２８．５１％），沼泽水域鸟类３７种及亚种（１５．２８％）。从地理型分     

编目外包环境下合作编目运行机制探讨

文章从论述合作编目对图书馆事业发展的重要意义入手,探讨合作编目的内在运行机制,概述速度是发展合作编目的重要基础,质量取胜是发展合作编目的重要法则,提出网络环境下应通过提升书目数据的质量意识、建设规范书目数据来发展合作编目的对策。     

吉林省左家自然保护区鸟类组成及其多样性研究

对吉林省左家自然保护区40年来鸟类组成的动态变化及变化原因进行了分析.结果表明,至2006年全区共见鸟类190种,隶属于17日、49科、103属,其中繁殖鸟(夏候鸟和留鸟)113种,占全区鸟类种数的59.5%.记录到国家二级保护种类30种;吉林省二级保护种类12种、三级保护种类21种.按照鸟类栖息的生境及植被特点,将自然保护区分为4个不同类型的群落,并对每个群落的多样性、均匀性及相似性进行了比较.其中次生林群落多样性指数最高(2.980),均匀性指数也最高(0.611);次生群落与灌丛群落的相似性指数相对高一些,为0.339.     

Audience drives male songbird response to partner's voice

According to the social intelligence hypothesis, social context represents an important force driving the selection of animal cognitive abilities such as the capacity to estimate the nature of the social relationships between other individuals. Despite this importance, the influence of this force has been assessed only in primates and never in other animals showing social interactions. In this way, avian communication generally takes place in a network of signallers and receivers, which represents an audience altering individual signalling behaviours. Indeed, vocal amplitude and repertoire are known to be socially regulated and the attitude towards the opposite sex may change depending on the audience. This 'audience effect' provides support for the reality of social awareness in some bird species. However no evidence has yet been found to suggest that birds are able to estimate the characteristics of the social relationships between group-mates. Here we show that the male of a gregarious songbird species--the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata)--pays attention to the mating status of conspecific pairs, and uses this information to control its behaviour towards its female partner.