The Vocal Repertoire of the Northern Giant Mouse Lemur ( Mirza zaza ) in Captivity
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The Vocal Repertoire of the Northern Giant Mouse Lemur (Mirza zaza) in Captivity Daniel Hending, et al. [full author details at the end of the article] Received: 27 April 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 / Published online: 27 November 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Detailed knowledge of a species’ vocal repertoire is an essential component for the interpretation of its social interactions and behavior. In the case of cryptic nocturnal primates, vocalizations are also a valuable tool for species identification, and possibly to discriminate between the sexes and/or group memberships during noninvasive field identification, monitoring, and conservation efforts. Here we describe the vocal repertoire of the northern giant mouse lemur, Mirza zaza, a small nocturnal primate endemic to northwest Madagascar, and analyze the repertoire to identify vocalizations for field identification and monitoring. We recorded vocalizations of a captive population of 40 M. zaza individuals at the Duke Lemur Center, USA, with detailed observations of call-associated behaviors of eight individuals in two groups. Based on their acoustic structure, we identified 10 different call types, which were correctly classified (92.8%) by a discriminant function analysis. The described adult call types occurred in the context of advertisement, alarm, affiliative behavior, agonistic behavior, and locomotion. Nine of these call types were already present in infants. To aid call classification, we used the acoustic structure of calls to construct a set of call classification rules for M. zaza. Among the loud vocalizations that were candidates for acoustic monitoring we document significant sex differences in the acoustic structure of trill calls of M. zaza, and significant differences between two groups in their loud whistle calls. The vocal repertoire described here will not only form the basis for future comparative and phylogenetic studies of lemur vocalizations; it will also enable rapid identification of this species for noninvasive acoustic surveys in their natural habitat to assess and monitor
Badge earned for open practices: Open Data. Experiment materials and data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.
Handling Editor: Joanna Setchell. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10764-020-00181-4.
The Vocal Repertoire of the Northern Giant Mouse Lemur (Mirza...
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population densities and establish range boundaries, thus aiding conservation efforts for this threatened lemur species. Keywords Acoustic structure . Behavioral context . Call classification . Group differences .
Mirza zaza . Sex differences . Vocal repertoire
Introduction Acoustic communication is an important mode of communication for all primates (Tomasello and ZuberbĂĽhler 2002), especially for species that live in environments with poor visibility, including social arboreal or nongregarious nocturnal primates (Altman 1967
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