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Vocal accommodation in howling of grey wolf (Canis lupus)
Schindlerová, Loretta ; Schneiderová, Irena (advisor) ; Linhart, Pavel (referee)
Vocal accommodation is the adjustment made by interlocutors while communicating, such as the adjustment of vocal pitch (i.e. the fundamental frequency) to match that of the other speaker. This behaviour can strengthen social bonds and has been predominantly studied in humans but recently also in the field of animal communication. Wolves are highly social animals and their howls - solos, duets, and choruses - are rich in information, yet vocal accommodation has not been studied in this species. Using a number of approaches, we explore whether grey wolves (Canis lupus) vocally accommodate to other wolves in duet howls by altering their howl contours to either converge to or diverge from another wolf's howl. To this aim we assessed the differences in the variables of the fundamental frequency and the contour of fundamental frequency using linear mixed models, Euclidean distance and dynamic time warping as metrics. Of the multiple analyses that we performed, one analysis identified significant differences between solo and duet howls, while another analysis indicated that duet howls within dyads were more similar than duet howls from different dyads. Our results point to the need for further exploration of the sources of variability and the role of context in order to confirm the existence of vocal...
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