Courting bird sings with stridulating wing feathers

In birds and other vertebrates, most acoustic signals are produced pneumatically by moving air through a vocal apparatus. Here we describe a unique mechanism used to produce a tonal acoustic signal in vertebrates. Video recordings of the courtship displays of male Club-winged Manakins, Machaeropterus deliciosus, reveal that males produce sustained harmonic tones through interactions among oscillating secondary wing feathers. This mechanism of sound production shows morphological and mechanistic convergence with arthropod stridulation. Intersexual selection for production of a nonvocal courtship song has led to major morphological, functional, and likely physiological modifications in the wing of this flying bird.     

声乐教学中古诗词艺术歌曲特色探究

本文以探究古诗词艺术歌曲特色为视角,从声乐教学角度出发,通过阐述古诗词艺术歌 曲的演唱技巧、声乐教学中古诗词艺术歌曲的意境把握以及声乐教学中古诗词艺术歌曲的美学 价值,进一步明确在声乐教学中应该如何指导学生来演唱此类作品,如何让学生准确的把握古诗 词艺术歌曲的演唱特色。强调在声乐教学中,学习古诗词艺术歌曲不仅要求学生有着一定的声 乐技巧,更要求学生拥有深厚的文化素养,真正切实的唱出古诗词艺术歌曲的魂,有较高的参考 价值和社会意义。     

Horsfield's hawk-cuckoo nestlings simulate multiple gapes for begging

Nestlings of some brood parasitic birds evict hosts' eggs and young soon after hatching, thereby avoiding discrimination by hosts while monopolizing parental care. Eviction carries a cost, however, because lone parasitic nestlings attract a reduced provisioning rate. Here we describe a form of visual signaling used by the evicting Horsfield's hawk-cuckoo (Cuculus fugax) to obtain sufficient food. The chick displays a gape-colored patch on the wing to the host parents as they deliver food, simulating the gaping display of more than one nestling.     

A tephritid fly mimics the territorial displays of its jumping spider predators

The tephritid fly Zonosemata vittigera (Coquillett) has a leg-like pattern on its wings and a wing-waving display that together mimic the agonistic territorial displays of jumping spiders (Salticidae). Zonosemata flies initiate this display when stalked by jumping spiders, causing the spiders to display back and retreat. Wing transplant experiments showed that both the wing pattern and wing-waving displays are necessary for effective mimicry: Zonosemata flies with transplanted house fly wings and house flies with transplanted Zonosemata wings were attacked by jumping spiders. Similar experiments showed that this mimicry does not protect Zonosemata against nonsalticid predators. This is a novel form of sign stimulus mimicry that may occur more generally.     

How low can you go? Physical production mechanism of elephant infrasonic vocalizations

Elephants can communicate using sounds below the range of human hearing ("infrasounds" below 20 hertz). It is commonly speculated that these vocalizations are produced in the larynx, either by neurally controlled muscle twitching (as in cat purring) or by flow-induced self-sustained vibrations of the vocal folds (as in human speech and song). We used direct high-speed video observations of an excised elephant larynx to demonstrate flow-induced self-sustained vocal fold vibration in the absence of any neural signals, thus excluding the need for any "purring" mechanism. The observed physical principles of voice production apply to a wide variety of mammals, extending across a remarkably large range of fundamental frequencies and body sizes, spanning more than five orders of magnitude.     

Auditory responses in avian vocal motor neurons: a motor theory for song perception in birds

The hypoglossal motor neurons that innervate the vocal organ (syrinx) of the male zebra finch show a selective, long-latency (50-millisecond) response to sound. This response is eliminated by lesions to forebrain song-control nuclei. Different song syllables elicit a response from different syringeal motor neurons. Conspecific vocalizations may therefore be perceived as members of a set of vocal gestures and thus distinct from other environmental sounds. This hypothesis is an avian parallel to the motor theory of speech perception in humans.     

A test for responsiveness to song structure and programming in female sparrows

Female song sparrows, primed with implants of estradiol, gave the solicitation display for copulation in response to acoustic stimulation with song. This technique demonstrated that female song sparrows respond more strongly to conspecific song than to alien songs, that they discriminate on the basis of both overall temporal pattern and syllabic structure, that they respond more to several song types than to repetitions of one song, and that they are most responsive to several song types if the songs are organized in bouts of a single type, as they are normally delivered by a male song sparrow. These results demonstrate a substantial correspondence between the structure and programming of the singing behavior of male birds and female responsiveness to song.     

Dynamics of the vocal imitation process: how a zebra finch learns its song

Song imitation in birds provides good material for studying the basic biology of vocal learning. Techniques were developed for inducing the rapid onset of song imitation in young zebra finches and for tracking trajectories of vocal change over a 7-week period until a match to a model song was achieved. Exposure to a model song induced the prompt generation of repeated structured sounds (prototypes) followed by a slow transition from repetitive to serial delivery of syllables. Tracking this transition revealed two phenomena: (i) Imitations of dissimilar sounds can emerge from successive renditions of the same prototype, and (ii) developmental trajectories for some sounds followed paths of increasing acoustic mismatch until an abrupt correction occurred by period doubling. These dynamics are likely to reflect underlying neural and articulatory constraints on the production and imitation of sounds.     

Hawaiian courtship songs: evolutionary innovation in communication signals of Drosophila

In Hawaii, flies of the genus Drosophila have undergone spectacular adaptive radiation, resulting in the evolution of more than 500 species of Drosophila that are found nowhere else on earth. This taxonomic uniqueness is reflected in behavior and morphology. Hawaiian Drosophila sing songs, as do continental Drosophila; however, the Hawaiian songs have diverged strongly in form and mechanism of production. The click-song of D. fasciculisetae's (Maui) has a carrier frequency an order of magnitude higher than those reported in familiar continental species, such as D. melanogaster (170 hertz). Drosophila fasciculisetae's song resembles a cicada's more than a fly's song. The song of D. cyrtoloma (Maui) has a complex pulse rhythm more typical of crickets than flies. The pulse song of D. silvestris (Hawaii) closely resembles that of D. melanogaster in both pulse rhythm and carrier frequency, but D. melanogaster sings by vibrating its wings, whereas D. silvestris sings through abdominal vibrations. These mechanisms are radical departures from the continental wing song mechanism and are further examples of the remarkable behavioral innovation that has occurred in the Drosophila of Hawaii during their evolutionary transit through these islands.     

Design and implementation of agriculture research digital photo manager

Software tools for photo collection management are proliferating, but they are generally developed for personnel photo management and have limited searching and browsing functions. We implemented the Agriculture Research Digital Photo Manager (ARDPM) prototype to enable researchers, extension personnel and other users to efficiently manage, search and browse their research photo archives. Research Digital Photo Manager provides a set of visual Boolean query interfaces for multiple ways of organizing and viewing the same photo collection. It gives users powerful search capabilities. Using thumbnail display and an easy interface, ARDPM is designed to provide users powerful searching and browsing photo capabilities.     

Behavior of vervet monkeys and other cercopithecines. New data show structural uniformities in the gestures of semiarboreal and terrestrial cercopithecines

A comparison of the communicative gestures of vervets with those of other cercopithecines reveals both similarities and differences. Examples have been given of gestures (i) exhibited by all cercopithecines, (ii) rare or absent in vervets and common in several other species, (iii) demonstrated by vervets and a few other cercopithecines, and (iv) common in vervets and rare or absent in other members of the subfamily. Vervets, baboons, and rhesus monkeys have approximately the same number of visual signals in their behavioral repertoires-46, 42, and 49, respectively. Patas monkeys seem to have a smaller repertoire. Fifty-nine percent of the vervet patterns have also been described for rhesus monkeys, 63 percent for baboons, and 54 percent for patas. In cercopithecines, visual communicative patterns seem to be evolutionarily one of the most stable forms of behavior, in structural terms. Some of the greatest differences in communicative gestures are differences in the temporal aspects. In species of this subfamily, vocal patterns seem to vary more than visual signals. Greater structural differences in communicative gestures may be found in the Cercopithecinae when systematic field studies are made of some of the forest-dwelling species, about which we know very little.     

母羊3种应激行为下叫声信号的对比分析

为研究母羊在不同应激行为下叫声信号所具有的特征,选择体重相近、年龄在2~3岁的小尾寒羊母羊20只,分别录取其在3种应激行为(产羔、寻羔、饥饿)下的叫声信号。利用LabVIEW软件设计母羊发声信号特征提取与识别系统,对母羊发声信号进行时域分析、频域分析(Yule-Walker法估计功率谱、Welch法估计功率谱、线性坐标功率谱和倒谱分析)和时频域分析,提取发声信号的时间间隔、持续时间、主峰频率、能量集中范围和基音周期等特征参数。结果表明:母羊3种不同类型声音的持续时间以及主峰频率均存在显著差异(P0.05)。母羊在寻羔和饥饿时发声的持续时间是产羔时的1.93和1.82倍,饥饿叫声的主频分别为产羔和寻羔时的34.77和38.81倍,母羊叫声信号Yule-Walker法功率谱在饥饿出现1个峰值,寻羔时出现2个峰值,而产羔时无明显峰值。叫声信号能量在产羔时集中在400~600Hz,寻羔和饥饿时集中在0~900Hz,3种叫声基音周期接近为0.1ms。证明母羊叫声信号在3种应激行为下有明显的不同,因此可以作为评价其健康状况及福利化养殖水平的重要指标之一。     

Illusions promote mating success in great bowerbirds

Sexual selection studies normally compare signal strengths, but signal components and sensory processing may interact to create misleading or attention-capturing illusions. Visual illusions can be produced by altering object and scene geometry in ways that trick the viewer when seen from a particular direction. Male great bowerbirds actively maintain size-distance gradients of objects on their bower courts that create forced-perspective illusions for females viewing their displays from within the bower avenue. We show a significant relationship between mating success and the female's view of the gradient; this view explains substantially more variance in mating success than the strength of the gradients. Illusions may be widespread in other animals because males of most species display to females with characteristic orientation and distance, providing excellent conditions for illusions.     

Genetic control of song specificity in crickets

The calling song of male field crickets is composed of stereotyped rhythmic pulse intervals, which are predictable expressions of genotype. Females identify conspecific males by their song. Two species of crickets were found to exhibit species-specific song preference, and hybrids between them preferred hybrid calls over either parental call. These results imply genetic control of song reception as well as transmission.     

Eye movement-retina delayed feedback

Time delays between ocular movement and retinal input have been studied by yoking a visual target to eye movement by experimental programming methods and a laboratory real-time computer system. The subject's task was to manipulate this eye movement-yoked target cursor to perform either compensatory or pursuit eye tracking. The computer thereafter was programmed to store input eye-movement signals and read them out after a delay interval to control the yoked visual target cursor controlled by the eye movements. Delay time constants of 0.1 second significantly affected tracking. Eye movement-retinal feedback delays appeared to have an even more marked effect on positive pursuit eye tracking.     

Representation of the quantity of visual items in the primate prefrontal cortex

Deriving the quantity of items is an abstract form of categorization. To explore it, monkeys were trained to judge whether successive visual displays contained the same quantity of items. Many neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex were tuned for quantity irrespective of the exact physical appearance of the displays. Their tuning curves formed overlapping filters, which may explain why behavioral discrimination improves with increasing numerical distance and why discrimination of two quantities with equal numerical distance worsens as their numerical size increases. A mechanism that extracts the quantity of visual field items could contribute to general numerical ability.     

Interspecific genetic control of courtship song production and reception in Drosophila

The genetic control of courtship song differences between Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans males was investigated by producing hybrids from reciprocal crosses. The song rhythm difference between the parental species appears to be due to sex-linked genes, whereas the basic interpulse-interval difference is autosomally inherited. Hybrid females show selective preferences for artificially generated songs carrying intermediate "hybrid" characteristics.     

Song replay during sleep and computational rules for sensorimotor vocal learning

Songbirds learn a correspondence between vocal-motor output and auditory feedback during development. For neurons in a motor cortex analog of adult zebra finches, we show that the timing and structure of activity elicited by the playback of song during sleep matches activity during daytime singing. The motor activity leads syllables, and the matching sensory response depends on a sequence of typically up to three of the preceding syllables. Thus, sensorimotor correspondence is reflected in temporally precise activity patterns of single neurons that use long sensory memories to predict syllable sequences. Additionally, "spontaneous" activity of these neurons during sleep matches their sensorimotor activity, a form of song "replay." These data suggest a model whereby sensorimotor correspondences are stored during singing but do not modify behavior, and off-line comparison (e.g., during sleep) of rehearsed motor output and predicted sensory feedback is used to adaptively shape motor output.     

Whistle matching in wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

Dolphin communication is suspected to be complex, on the basis of their call repertoires, cognitive abilities, and ability to modify signals through vocal learning. Because of the difficulties involved in observing and recording individual cetaceans, very little is known about how they use their calls. This report shows that wild, unrestrained bottlenose dolphins use their learned whistles in matching interactions, in which an individual responds to a whistle of a conspecific by emitting the same whistle type. Vocal matching occurred over distances of up to 580 meters and is indicative of animals addressing each other individually.