title: Vocal complexity influences female responses to gelada male calls.
abstract: Extensive research indicates that inter-sexual selection drives the evolution of complex vocal communication in birds, but parallel lines of evidence are almost entirely absent in mammals. This dearth of evidence, particularly among primates, limits our understanding of the link between sociality and vocal complexity. Here, we use a playback experiment to quantify how wild female geladas (Theropithecus gelada) respond to three call types that are 'derived' (i.e., unique to geladas) and made by males during various affiliative contexts. These derived calls appeared to be highly salient and preferable to females: they looked longer towards and spent more time in proximity to playbacks of male vocal sequences containing one of the derived calls than to sequences containing only common and less elaborate 'grunt' calls. Our results provide the first experimental evidence for vocal elaboration as a male-specific strategy to maintain social bonds with females in non-human primates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Morgan L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Gustison
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.|Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, 830 North University, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Thore J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Bergman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D012737:Sex Factors; D016671:Theropithecus; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception; D014828:Vocalization, Animal