ACOUSTIC SIGNALING IN CERVIDS: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH FOR MEASURING VOCAL COMMUNICATION IN FALLOW DEER
Abstract:
In deer, as in other group-living mammals, communication plays a crucial role in social interactions. Acoustic signals are particularly widespread and used by individuals of all ages and sexes in different social contexts. Over the past 20 years the interest in deer vocal communication has increased with the development of new techniques in sound recording and acoustic analysis. In this paper, we present two studies on vocal communication in fallow deer and discuss the methodological approach we applied to investigate and test the information content of calls used during reproduction and mother-offspring interactions.
Keywords: acoustic analysis, calls, Dama dama, deer, formants, playback experiments, vocalizations