The Call Characteristics And The Mating Call Of The Crested Ibis(Nipponia Nippon)

A study on the call of nine populations (four wild and five captive populations) of Crested Ibis (Nipponia nippon) was conducted in Yangxian Crested Ibis Ecological Garden, Huayang Acclimation Training Base and Liuzhuang village respectively from November to December,2010, and from January to April,2011. Avisoft-SASLab Pro5.1software was applied to carry out a quantitative analysis on the call of Crested Ibis in wintering and breeding periods.The results showed that wild Crested Ibis hardly call during the day, but call frequently at night at roost sites in wintering period. While in the breeding period, wild Crested Ibis call all day. Totally, eleven types of calls were defined according to eleven vocal behavior of wild population, which were flight call, nestling begging call, alarm call, driving call, scaring call, contact call, mating call, mimic mating call, congregation call, occupation chirping call and hovering call.Thirteen types of calls were also identified according to six behaviors of captive population, including scaring of flight call, mating call, mimic mating call, scaring call,"call-answer" contact call and daily summon call. Wild population and captive population have nine types of calls in common. Comparing the nine types of calls using independent sample T-test showed that though the spectrums were very similar to the same kind of call between the wild and captive populations, the parameters were significantly different (P<0.05).The independent sample T-test was also used to distinguish mating call and mimic mating call in the wild population and captive population, The result showed that the number of note and duration time of the whole call were significantly different (P<0.01) in both populations. But other parameters such as the duration time of each note and the frequency were not significantly different. Therefore, the duration time of the whole call reaching eleven seconds were identified to distinguish the mating call and the mimic mating call in wild and captive populations. The mating call, the number of note and the principal frequency were great significantly different (P<0.01) between the wild population and the captive population, however, the fundamental frequency is great significantly different (P<0.01), the number of note and duration time of the whole call are significantly different (P<0.05) between the two captive populations. In the mimic mating call, the principal frequency and the min frequency are significantly different (P<0.05) between the wild and the captive populations, while only the min frequency is significantly different (P<0.05) between the two captive populations.