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A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate. A lek can also indicate an available plot of space able to be utilized by displaying males to defend their own share of territory for the breeding season. A lekking species is characterised by male displays, strong female mate choice, and the conferring of indirect benefits to males and reduced costs to females. Although most prevalent among birds such as black grouse, lekking is also found in a wide range of vertebrates including some bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, and arthropods including crustaceans and insects.
Aglais io, the European peacock, more commonly known simply as the peacock butterfly, is a colourful butterfly, found in Europe and temperate Asia as far east as Japan. It was formerly classified as the only member of the genus Inachis. It should not be confused or classified with the "American peacocks" in the genus Anartia; while belonging to the same family as the European peacock, Nymphalidae, the American peacocks are not close relatives of the Eurasian species. The peacock butterfly is resident in much of its range, often wintering in buildings or trees. It therefore often appears quite early in spring. The peacock butterfly has figured in research in which the role of eyespots as an anti-predator mechanism has been investigated. The peacock is expanding its range and is not known to be threatened.
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.
Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its own, using brood mimicry, for example by having eggs that resemble the host's.
The Mantellidae are a family of the order Anura. These frogs are endemic to the islands of Madagascar and Mayotte.
Animal song is not a well-defined term in scientific literature, and the use of the more broadly defined term 'vocalizations' is in more common use. Song generally consists of several successive vocal sounds incorporating multiple syllables. Some sources distinguish between simpler vocalizations, termed “calls”, reserving the term “song” for more complex productions. Song-like productions have been identified in several groups of animals, including cetaceans, avians (birds), anurans (frogs), and humans. Social transmission of song has been found in groups including birds and cetaceans.
Boophis goudotii is a species of frog in the family Mantellidae. It is endemic to Madagascar where it is widespread on the high plateau of central Madagascar. Records elsewhere are uncertain and many of them represent misidentifications. It is the only Malagasy frog where females are known to be vocal.
Boophis occidentalis is a species of frog in the family Mantellidae. It is endemic to Madagascar. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forests, rivers, pastureland, urban areas, and heavily degraded former forest. It is threatened by habitat loss.
A courtship display is a set of display behaviors in which an animal, usually a male, attempts to attract a mate; the mate exercises choice, so sexual selection acts on the display. These behaviors often include ritualized movement ("dances"), vocalizations, mechanical sound production, or displays of beauty, strength, or agonistic ability.
Vocal learning is the ability to modify acoustic and syntactic sounds, acquire new sounds via imitation, and produce vocalizations. "Vocalizations" in this case refers only to sounds generated by the vocal organ as opposed to by the lips, teeth, and tongue, which require substantially less motor control. A rare trait, vocal learning is a critical substrate for spoken language and has only been detected in eight animal groups despite the wide array of vocalizing species; these include humans, bats, cetaceans, pinnipeds, elephants, and three distantly related bird groups including songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds. Vocal learning is distinct from auditory learning, or the ability to form memories of sounds heard, a relatively common trait which is present in all vertebrates tested. For example, dogs can be trained to understand the word "sit" even though the human word is not in its innate auditory repertoire. However, the dog cannot imitate and produce the word "sit" itself as vocal learners can.
A mating call is the auditory signal used by animals to attract mates. It can occur in males or females, but literature is abundantly favored toward researching mating calls in males. In addition, mating calls are often the subject of mate choice, in which the preferences of one gender for a certain type of mating call can drive sexual selection in a species. This can result in sympatric speciation of some animals, where two species diverge from each other while living in the same environment.
Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology edited by Barry Truax, in 1978, the term has occasionally been used, sometimes interchangeably, with the term acoustic ecology. Soundscape ecologists also study the relationships between the three basic sources of sound that comprise the soundscape: those generated by organisms are referred to as the biophony; those from non-biological natural categories are classified as the geophony, and those produced by humans, the anthropophony.
Female copulatory vocalizations, also called female copulation calls or coital vocalizations, are produced by female primates, including human females, and female non-primates. Copulatory vocalizations usually occur during copulation and are hence related to sexual activity. Vocalizations that occur before intercourse, for the purpose of attracting mates, are known as mating calls.
Polygyny is a mating system in which one male lives and mates with multiple females but each female only mates with a single male. Systems where several females mate with several males are defined either as promiscuity or polygynandry. Lek mating is frequently regarded as a form of polygyny, because one male mates with many females, but lek-based mating systems differ in that the male has no attachment to the females with whom he mates, and that mating females lack attachment to one another.
Sexual selection in amphibians involves sexual selection processes in amphibians, including frogs, salamanders and newts. Prolonged breeders, the majority of frog species, have breeding seasons at regular intervals where male-male competition occurs with males arriving at the waters edge first in large number and producing a wide range of vocalizations, with variations in depth of calls the speed of calls and other complex behaviours to attract mates. The fittest males will have the deepest croaks and the best territories, with females known to make their mate choices at least partly based on the males depth of croaking. This has led to sexual dimorphism, with females being larger than males in 90% of species, males in 10% and males fighting for groups of females.
The anti-exhaustion hypothesis is a possible explanation for the existence of large repertoires and the song switching behaviour exhibited in birds. This hypothesis states that muscle exhaustion occurring due to repeating song bouts can be avoided by switching to a different song in the bird's repertoire. The anti-exhaustion hypothesis therefore predicts that birds with larger repertoires are less susceptible to exhaustion because they can readily change the song that they are producing.
Boophis popi is a nocturnal species of skeleton frog endemic to the forests of Madagascar. It is characterized by its red irises and distinctly elevated reticulations on the dorsum. It is brown and gray, has slender limbs, has a pulsating call, and is slightly larger than similar frogs in its genus. The species was described in 2011 and is named after the company "pop-interactive GmbH".
Boophis fayi is a nocturnal species of skeleton frog endemic to the forests and wetlands or Madagascar with unusual greenish eyes. It is considered to be vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Boophis entingae is a species of skeleton frog endemic to northern Madagascar.
Boophis haingana is an endangered species of skeleton frog endemic to southeastern Madagascar. It is characterized by its advertisement call, which has shorter note durations and faster note repetitions compared to other frogs in its genus. It is pale green in color and translucent at certain parts of the body, such as the dorsal and ventral skin.
References
- 1 2 Krebs, John R. (May 1977). "The significance of song repertoires: The Beau Geste hypothesis". Animal Behaviour. 25: 475–478. doi:10.1016/0003-3472(77)90022-7. S2CID 53181702.
- ↑ Searcy, W A; Andersson, M (November 1986). "Sexual Selection and the Evolution of Song". Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 17 (1): 507–533. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.17.110186.002451. JSTOR 2097007.
- ↑ Wren, P.C (1924). Beau Geste.
- 1 2 1Narins 2lewis 3McClelland, 1P.M 2E.R 3B.E (March 2018). "Hyperextended call note repertoire of the endemic Madagascar tree frog Boophis madagascarensis". the zoological society of London. 250: 283–298.
- 1 2 Rebar, Darren; Barbosa, Flavia; Greenfield, Michael D. (2016). "Acoustic experience influences male and female pre- and postcopulatory behaviors in a bushcricket". Behavioral Ecology. 27 (2): 434–443. doi:10.1093/beheco/arv171 . Retrieved 28 March 2018.