@inbook {57889, title = {Plant Cognition: Ability to Perceive {\textquoteleft}Touch{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}Sound{\textquoteright}}, booktitle = {Sensory Biology of Plants}, year = {2019}, abstract = {

Plants\’ sessile life-style has enabled them to develop enormous sensitivity towards their dynamic, tactile and clamorous surroundings. Consequently, besides a range of different stimuli, plants can even perceive subtle stimuli, like \‘touch\’ and unanticipatedly \‘sound\’. Importantly, touch sensitivity in plants is not just limited to sensitive plant and carnivorous species, which respond through eye-catchy movements; instead every plant and living plant cell senses and responds to mechanostimulation, whether intrinsic or extrinsic in nature. For instance, plant roots are extremely touch-sensitive, and upon encountering a bar- rier in soil, they are able to effectively redirect their growth to transcend it. Similarly, tendrils in climbing plants exhibit extreme sensitivity towards touch, which enable them to sense and grab a support in close vicinity. Unlike touch sensitivity, which was recognized long ago by Robert Hooke and Darwin, plants\’ sensitivity towards sound has started gaining attention only recently. The past decade has seen major advances in this area of plant biology; many breakthrough discoveries were made that revealed the, otherwise debatable, ecological signifi- cance of sound perception in plants\’ life. It has come to light that plants not just sense but also distinguish relevant sound among a mixture of irrelevant sound frequencies; plants distinguish buzz produced by a true pollinator among pollen thieves in the sophisticated process of buzz pollination. Similarly, plants distin- guish sound typical of a herbivore for elicitation of defence response. Interestingly, plant roots can sense sound of flowing water in order to direct their growth towards the water source. Given the similarity in the physical properties of touch and sound stimuli, many recently discovered signaling events and molecular players in touch and sound perception are noted to be common. However, in view of the contrasting responses tailored according to the stimuli, plants appear to distinguish well among the two in an ecologically meaningful manner.

}, keywords = {Cognition, development, Growth, Mechanoperception, Plant acoustics, sound, Thigmonasty, Thigmotropism, Touch, Volatile organic compounds}, isbn = {978-981-13-8921-4}, doi = {10.1007/978-981-13-8922-110.1007/978-981-13-8922-1_6}, url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-981-13-8922-1}, author = {Mishra, Ratnesh Chandra and Bae, Hanhong}, editor = {Sopory, Sudhir} } @article {57415, title = {Perinatal high-fat diet impairs pup retrieval and induces sex-specific changes in ultrasonic vocalization characteristics of rat pups}, year = {2019}, abstract = {

Rodent pups emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) to solicit maternal behavior, promoting their survival. Conversely, maternal behaviors affect the expression of pup USVs. We previously demonstrated that a maternal diet high in saturated fat (HFD) alters maternal behavior and is associated with early maturation of pups and their stress physiology. Here, we assessed the developmental profiles of pup USVs using quantitative and qualitative measures on postnatal days (PND)7 and 13. Quantitative measures included call counts, duration, and frequency, while qualitative measures examined calls\&$\#$39; sonographic structures. HFD offspring lacked the typical decrease in USV numbers with age observed among control offspring. They also had shorter calls at PND7 compared to control and HFD offspring at PND13. HFD female offspring showed a greater number of one-frequency-sweep calls, while male pups showed a greater number of two-frequency-sweep calls compared to control offspring. Concomitantly, HFD dams showed impaired pup retrieval on PND7. The data suggest that fewer USVs of shorter duration in HFD offspring may alter dam solicitation and thus impair maternal pup retrieval. This study highlights the impacts of perinatal HFD exposure on the dyadic reciprocal interaction between dam and pups, which may set the stage for long-lasting effects on offspring physiology and behavior.

}, keywords = {development, maternal behavior, mother{\textendash}pup interactions, perinatal high-fat diet, rodent, sonogram, ultrasonic vocalization}, doi = {10.1002/dev.21923}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/dev.21923}, author = {Abuaish, Sameera and Tse, Emmanuel K. and McGowan, Patrick O.} } @article {52572, title = {Gestural development of chimpanzees in the wild: the impact of interactional experience}, journal = {Animal Behaviour}, volume = {134}, year = {2017}, month = {Jan-12-2017}, pages = {271 - 282}, abstract = {

To understand the complexity involved in animal signalling, studies have mainly focused on repertoire size and information conveyed in vocalizations of birds and nonhuman primates. However, recent studies on gestural abilities of nonhuman primates have shown that we also need a detailed understanding of other communicative modalities and underlying cognitive skills to grasp this phenomenon in detail. Here, we thus examined gestural signalling of chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, living in two communities in the wild (Kanyawara, Uganda; Ta\ï South, Co^te d\&$\#$39;Ivoire) with a special focus on the influence of the social environment on signal development. Specifically, we investigated to what extent specific social factors, namely behavioural context, interaction rates and maternal proximity, affect gestural production (i.e. gesture frequency, sequences and repertoire size). We used a combination of video recordings and focal scans obtained from 11 infants aged between 9 and 69 months during 1145 h of observation throughout two consecutive field periods. Overall, we found that social play was the context in which the highest number of gestures occurred. While gesture frequency and repertoire size increased with higher inter- action rates with nonmaternal conspecifics and the number of previous interaction partners, no effect was found for interaction rates with mothers. Our results thus imply that infants of social mothers may have a head start in life. Moreover, we provide hitherto undocumented evidence for sex differences in gestural signalling, which may reflect the differential importance of early socialization for chimpanzee males and females. Gestural development thus relies heavily on interactional experiences with con- specifics, which adds support for gestural acquisition via the learning mechanism of \‘social negotiation\’ in great apes.

}, keywords = {chimpanzee, communication, development, gestures, interactional experience, ontogeny, Pan troglodytes}, issn = {00033472}, doi = {10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.12.018}, url = {http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S000334721630361X}, author = {Fr{\"o}hlich, Marlen and M{\"u}ller, Gudrun and Zeitr{\"a}g, Claudia and Wittig, Roman M. and Pika, Simone} }