2021/02/05
论文一
论文二
论文标题：Colony-specific dialects of naked mole-rats
作者：Rochelle Buffenstein
期刊：Science
发表时间：2021/01/29
数字识别码：10.1126/science.abf7962
摘要：Oral communication is an essential component of vertebrate social living. Even so, few animals are vocal learners. Rather, in most species vocalizations are instinctive, immutable, and genetically determined. Humans, whales, and songbirds are well-known exceptions, with elaborate language learned in early life using vocal mimicry, thereby creating distinctive geographic dialects or accents. These vocalizations nevertheless retain acoustic flexibility. On page 503 of this issue, Barker et al. (1) show that unlike other rodents, the almost blind, highly social, yet xenophobic, naked mole-rat has a colony-specific greeting—the soft chirp—that is learned in early life and facilitates recognition of colony members and thereby helps maintain colony cohesiveness. This soft-chirp signature appears to be modulated by the matriarch, or “queen.” Should she die, or new colonies form by fission or outbreeding, after a period of acoustic variability the dialect once again becomes fixed and specific to the colony when a new queen is established.
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所属学科：
动物学
裸鼹鼠（学名：Heterocephalus glaber）是一种分布于东非部分地区的挖掘类啮齿目动物，也是目前被分类于裸鼹鼠属下的唯一物种。它是仅有的两种真社会性哺乳动物之一（另外一种是达马拉兰鼹鼠），但由于对其真社会性有争议，和其它满足 Wilson (1971) 定义的哺乳动物的存在，这个定义还有待讨论。[2]。
