Researchers from Sam Ratulangi University (Indonesia) and Cornell University (United States) discovered that pairs of Gursky's spectral tarsiers sing duets have evolved to demonstrate a species' version of coloratura. Scientists suggest that such a sound can be the equivalent of a peacock's tail.
Gurky's Spectral Tarsier Colaratura Sound Research
According to Wikipedia, a coloratura soprano is a type of operatic soprano voice specializing in music with agile runs, leaps, and trills. Adult males and females emit rapidly repeated broadband notes in unison to form a duet. Tarsiers can produce this sound, but they cannot sing the duets equally.
Only a select few of Gursky's spectral tarsiers can simultaneously produce many rapid repetitions of notes and a few notes with the widest bandwidth. These findings suggest that the complexity of duets may provide information about the physical fitness of the dueting pair in this species to extra-pair conspecifics. In other words, for both males and females, they may be the tarsier equivalent of a peacock's tail.
First author Isabel Comella, a researcher at the K Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and a recent Cornell University graduate, said, "Here we show that Gursky's spectral tarsier duets exhibit acoustic trade-offs in note rate and note bandwidth-that is, the range of frequencies within a note." To produce high-frequency notes with wide bandwidths, Gursky's spectral tarsiers must make rapid and comprehensive vocal modifications, which can be physically demanding. Because of this, the researchers discover that duets with a wide bandwidth repeat note more slowly and vice versa.
Comella and her co-authors recorded 50 duets totaling 6681 notes sung by 14 T. spectrumgurskyae female-male pairs between July and August 2018 in Tangkoko National Park in North Sulawesi. Males and females were equally likely to start duets, which lasted between 13 and 204 seconds. The distribution of note types was continuous, implying that the tarsier vocal range is made up of a graded range of frequencies combined into a duet rather than discrete notes like the human do, re, mi.
Both sexes had a negative relationship between note bandwidth and duet rate. It implies a trade-off between these two traits, but the negative relationship was steeper, which is stronger for females. The findings are consistent with other species' observations of a trade-off between note rate and duet bandwidth.
Scientists' Interpretation of the Sound Gurky's Spectral Tarsier Produce
Gursky's spectral tarsiers are socially monogamous. The pairs live in territories ranging from 1.6 to 4.1 hectares. To defend their territory, pairs sing duets to other individuals of the same species to let them know that they already have a mate and that it is now theirs. This decreases the number of expensive and dangerous fights. The chorus is formed when children join in on their parents' song.
According to the authors' theory, only physically fit people can easily sing broadband notes quickly due to these physiological limitations.
Further study is needed to determine whether T.Spectrumgurskyae are particularly bad at producing these duets despite their age, health, and nutrition.
Dr. Dena J Clink, a researcher at the K Lisa Yang Center, said there is still a lot to learn about how tarsier duets function, including what knowledge they impart to other tarsiers and what knowledge they contain about the calling animals.
The study was published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
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