Plasticity And Vocal Learning Of Social Vocalizations In Greater Horseshoe Bats,Rhinolophus Ferrumequinum

Acoustic signaling is an important and most extensive form of communication among animals.The acquisition of animal vocalization behavior mainly depends on genetic acquisition and vocal learning.Vocal learning refers to the behavior of animals to alter their own vocalization by imitating the sounds of other vocalists,which can simplify and shorten the process of acoustic signal inheritance,and is an important way for the successful transmission of animal acoustic culture.Vocal learning is a rare and patchily distributed among non-human mammals.Understanding the influence of different social factors and individual factors on vocal learning can provide an important basis for the origin and evolution of animal vocalization learning and human language.In this paper,we studied the vocalization learning and influencing factors of the greater horseshoe bats(Rhinolophus ferrumequinum).Two general types of vocal production learning exist,namely social modification and learned acquisition.This paper verifies whether the juvenile greater horseshoe bats with mature vocal repertoire has the ability of vocal learning by changing syllable parameters and can modulate the spectral call parameters according to specific call syllables in the process of vocal learning.The results show that the juvenile greater horseshoe bats has the ability of vocalization learning by modifying the existing syllable parameters.The observed changes in the fundamental frequencies might be caused by the frequency modulation as a whole,which does not support the prediction that the greater horseshoe bats are capable of modifying frequency according to specific syllable types.Both human language learning and animal vocal learning are influenced by the social factors of different ways of communication,and social interactions can promote and enhance language and vocal learning by enhance attention through vision.This paper creates different learning environments by setting passive playback and mixed feeding of different geographical populations,and controls the energy and quantity of sound exposed by two treatment groups to verify whether different communication modes have an effect on vocal learning of amblyopic species.The results showed that the juvenile greater horseshoe bats captivated with adult bats demonstrate faster vocal learning than juveniles only passively exposed to playback.Therefore,the way of communication has an effect on the vocal learning of the greater horseshoe bats,and social interaction promotes the vocal learning of the greater horseshoe bats.In the process of vocal learning,the individual bats were monitored and statistically analyzed to verify the individual differences in vocal learning.The results showed that there was no individual difference in speed of vocal learning,but there was individual difference in vocal plasticity.There is a significant correlation between the frequency plasticity and the precision of vocal learning,the higher the vocal plasticity,the better the precision of vocal learning.The above findings show that:(1)The juvenile greater horseshoe bats has the ability of vocal learning of social calls with geographical divergence;(2)The greater horseshoe bats are not capable of modifying frequency according to specific syllable types;(3)Social interaction promotes the vocal learning of the greater horseshoe bats;(4)Vocal plasticity influence on the precision of vocal learning.