title: Acoustically diverse vocalization repertoire in the Himalayan leaf-nosed bat, a widely distributed Hipposideros species.
abstract: Insectivorous bats vocalize to both communicate with conspecifics and to echolocate. The communicative vocalizations or "calls" of bats either consist of or are constructed from discrete acoustic units, termed "syllables." This study examined syllable diversity in the Himalayan leaf-nosed bat, Hipposideros armiger, a species that is widely distributed across Southeast Asia. This social species' vocalizations were hypothesized to consist of a wide variety of syllables facilitating its social interactions. To test this hypothesis, multiple acoustic parameters were measured from recorded vocalizations to map the acoustic boundaries of syllables. Spectrographic signatures were used to classify all recorded sounds into 35 distinct syllable types-18 as simple syllables and 17 as composites. K-means clustering independently provided an optimal fit of simple syllables into 18 clusters with a good correspondence to 15 spectrographically assigned syllable types. Discriminant analysis further confirmed the spectrographic classification of constant frequency syllables (0% misclassification) and revealed a low (<15%) misclassification of spectrograms for all examples of frequency modulation syllables. Multidimensional scaling of mean values of multiple parameters provided a spectrographically constrained relational mapping of syllable types within two dimensions. These data suggest that H. armiger has a complex, well organized syllabic repertoire despite simple syllables being rarely emitted in isolation.
authors.affiliation: Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, 2555 Jingyue Street, Changchun 130117, China.
authors.forename: Aiqing
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, 2555 Jingyue Street, Changchun 130117, China.
authors.forename: Tinglei
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, 2555 Jingyue Street, Changchun 130117, China.
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA.
authors.forename: Jagmeet S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Kanwal
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000818:Animals; D002685:Chiroptera; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D014828:Vocalization, Animal