BioAcoustica is a free, open repository of wildlife sound recordings from the Natural History Museum, London.
Taxonomic index of the BioAcoustica collection
Acoustic and biological measurements in the BioAcoustica collection
Recording annotations from ann-o-mate
The specimens that recordings are of, from the collections
Sibiryakova, Olga V.; Volodin, Ilya A.; Frey, Roland; Zuther, Steffen; Kisebaev, Talgat B.; Salemgareev, Albert R.; Volodina, Elena V. (2017). Remarkable vocal identity in wild-living mother and neonate saiga antelopes: a specialization for breeding in huge aggregations?. The Science of Nature, 104(3-4).
Saiga antelopes Saiga tatarica tatarica give birth in large aggregations, and offspring follow the herd soon after birth. Herding is advantageous as anti-predator strategy; however, communication between mothers and neonates is strongly complicated in large aggregations. Individual series of nasal and oral contact calls of mother and neonate saiga antelopes were selected from recordings made with automated recording systems placed near the hiding neonates on the saiga breeding grounds in Northern Kazakhstan during synchronized parturitions of 30,000 calving females. We used for comparison of the acoustic structure of nasal and oral contact calls 168 nasal calls of 18 mothers, 192 oral calls of 21 mothers, 78 nasal calls of 16 neonates, and 197 oral calls of 22 neonates. In the oral calls of either mothers or neonates, formant frequencies were higher and the duration was longer than in the nasal calls, whereas fundamental frequencies did not differ between oral and nasal calls. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) based on six acoustic variables, accurately classified individual identity for 99.4% of oral calls of 18 mothers, for 89.3% of nasal calls of 18 mothers, and for 94.4% of oral calls of 18 neonates. The average value of correct classification to individual was higher in mother oral than in mother nasal calls and in mother oral calls than in neonate oral calls; no significant difference was observed between mother nasal and neonate oral calls. Variables mainly responsible for vocal identity were the fundamental frequency and the second and third formants in either mothers or neonates, and in either nasal or oral calls. The high vocal identity of mothers and neonates suggests a powerful potential for the mutual mother-offspring recognition in dense aggregations of saiga antelopes as an important component of their survival strategy.
| Choir of mother and neonate saigas | Saiga tatarica tatarica |
| Example series of oral calls of one mother saiga, used for acoustic analysis. | Saiga tatarica tatarica |
| Sound file of four saiga calls: mother nasal call, mother oral call, neonate nasal call and neonate oral call | Saiga tatarica tatarica |
| Saiga tatarica tatarica |
Where the specimens that recordings are of were collected, not where the sound was recorded