Recognizing gibbons from their regional accents

Researchers from the German Primate Center, Goettingen, compared the songs and the genetic diversity of 19 populations, covering 6 species of crested gibbons, to their location. Gibbon songs are adapted to transmission in a forest so the transmission energy is concentrated in a single frequency band, with slow modulations, on an optimised song syllable. Consequently, in order to identify species, over 400 song samples were analysed using 53 acoustic parameters. Genetic diversity between the species was measured by looking at mutations in the gene coding for mitochondrial cytochrome b.

The four most related songs came from the gibbon species with the most closely related DNA and geographical location, from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam with the gibbons from the southern most areas being more closely related to each other than to the more northerly Vietnamese gibbons and gibbons from China supporting the suggested migration direction from the North to the South.

Van Ngoc Thinh says that "Each gibbon has its own variable song but, much like people, there is a regional similarity between gibbons within the same location".

More information: Concordance between vocal and genetic diversity in crested gibbons, Van Ngoc Thinh, Chris Hallam, Christian Roos, and Kurt Hammerschmidt, BMC Evolutionary Biology (in press)

Provided by BioMed Central