Bioacoustics can sometimes be used as a conservation tool to monitor animal behavior, and other studies are shedding light on how it affects animal evolution, disease transfer, and cognition.Įlk are not the only species with regional dialects. ![]() These unanswered questions are part of the larger field of bioacoustics, which blends biology and acoustics to deepen our understanding of the noises that surround us in nature. “It’s an interplay between both.” Blumstein, a marmot-communication researcher, adds that the mechanisms behind these vocal variations deserve more study. “It’s not as though a song or vocal learning is ‘all environmental’ or ‘all genetic,’” he says. Read: The mystery of the disappearing elephant-seal dialectsĬlarke’s research adds a small piece to the larger puzzle of animal communication, says Daniel Blumstein, a biologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study. Clarke hopes to find out whether genetic variation-which is more limited in Pennsylvania’s herd-might explain differences in bugles, and whether those differences are learned by young males listening to older bulls. She initially hypothesized that calls would differ based on the way sound travels in Pennsylvania’s dense forests compared with the more open landscapes of Colorado and Wyoming, but her data didn’t support that theory. Meanwhile, bugles change frequency from low to high tones more sharply in Wyoming than they do in Pennsylvania or Colorado.Ĭlarke isn’t sure why the dialects vary. Pennsylvania’s elk herds were translocated from the West in the early 1900s, and today, they have longer tonal whistles and quieter bugles than elk in Colorado. “You can recognize Bill’s handwriting from George’s handwriting.” But by using spectrograms to visually represent sound frequencies, researchers can see the details of each region’s signature bugles. Although most people can detect human dialects and accents-a honey-thick southern drawl versus nasal New England speech-differences in regional elk bugles are almost imperceptible to human ears. Her research, published earlier this year in the Journal of Mammalogy, dug into the unique symphony created by different elk herds. Read: Who’s the cutest little dolphin? Is it you? That surprised her: “Thousands of people go to national parks to hear them bugle, and we don’t know what we’re listening to.” “My graduate students and I started delving into the library and could find nothing on elk communication, period,” she says. ![]() Hearing elk bugle in Rocky Mountain National Park decades ago inspired Clarke to investigate the sound. ![]() Other studies have shown that whale, bat, and bird calls have dialects of sorts too a team led by Jennifer Clarke, a behavioral ecologist at the Center for Wildlife Studies and a professor at the University of La Verne, in California, is the first to identify such differences in any species of ungulate. Now new research has found that male elks’ bugles sound slightly different depending on where they live. ![]() A minute later, another bull answers from somewhere in the shadows.īugles are the telltale sound of elk during mating season. The sound ricochets across the grassy meadow. A mournful, groaning call cuts through the dusky-blue light: a male elk, bugling. It’s a crisp fall evening in Grand Teton National Park. This article was originally published by High Country News.
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