The paper, " The origins of acoustic communication in vertebrates," was published in the open-access journal Nature Communications today. Applying statistical analytical tools, they tested several ideas: whether acoustic communication arose independently in different groups and when whether it is associated with nocturnal activity and whether it tends to be preserved in a lineage. They obtained data from the scientific literature on the absence or presence of acoustic communication within each sampled species and mapped it onto the tree. The authors assembled an evolutionary tree for 1,800 species showing the evolutionary relationships of mammals, birds, lizards and snakes, turtles, crocodilians, and amphibians going back 350 million years. Wiens, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the University of Arizona College of Science, and Zhuo Chen, a visiting scientist from Henan Normal University in Xinxiang, China, traced the evolution of acoustic communication in terrestrial vertebrates back to 350 million years ago. Acoustic communication among vertebrate animals is such a familiar experience that it seems impossible to imagine a world shrouded in silence.īut why did the ability to shout, bark, bellow or moo evolve in the first place? In what is likely the first study of its kind, John J. No birds singing, no tigers roaring, no monkeys chattering – and no human voices, either.
Imagine taking a hike through a forest or a stroll through a zoo and not a sound fills the air, other than the occasional chirp from a cricket. Frogs, like mammals, originated as predominantly nocturnal animals, but maintained the ability to communicate acoustically after switching to being active during the day.
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