Ahana Aurora Fernandez

Ahana Aurora Fernandez
Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity | MFN · Evolution und Geoprozesse

Dr.rer.nat
Behavioural biologist

About

17
Publications
4,126
Reads
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230
Citations
Introduction
I am a behavioral biologist specialized in bioacoustics and biolinguistics. I have always been fascinated by vocal communication, in particular by vocal ontogeny and vocal learning. I am investigating key components of human language in animals, particularly in bats, combining fieldwork and playback experiments to learn more about the biological foundations of language. I hold expertise in social behaviour and acoustic communication. Currently, I am training myself in neuroethological methods.
Education
May 2015 - April 2020
Freie Universität Berlin
Field of study
  • Biology
September 2012 - February 2014
University of Bern
Field of study
  • Biology with a special qualification in Evolutionary Ecology

Publications

Publications (17)
Preprint
Learning, particularly vocal learning, is often a social process. In human infants, it is well-established that social interactions influence speech acquisition and are hypothesized to modulate attentiveness and sensory processes, thereby affecting the speech-learning process. However, our understanding of how social interactions shape vocal ontoge...
Preprint
Learning, particularly vocal learning, is often a social process. In human infants, it is well-established that social interactions influence speech acquisition and are hypothesized to modulate attentiveness and sensory processes, thereby affecting the speech-learning process. However, our understanding of how social interactions shape vocal ontoge...
Preprint
Full-text available
Learning, particularly vocal learning, is often a social process. In human infants, it is well-established that social interactions influence speech acquisition and are hypothesized to modulate attentiveness and sensory processes, thereby affecting the speech-learning process. However, our understanding of how social interactions shape vocal ontoge...
Article
Full-text available
Chromatic disorders in bats are typically documented by brief, incidental observations of individuals at day roosts or by accidental captures during mist-netting. Such descriptions usually lack observations on social behaviour including interactions between bats with aberrant pigmentation and other individuals. Here, we report the first observation...
Article
Full-text available
A key feature of vocal ontogeny in a variety of taxa with extensive vocal repertoires is a developmental pattern in which vocal exploration is followed by a period of category formation that results in a mature species-specific repertoire. Vocal development preceding the adult repertoire is often called ‘babbling’, a term used to describe aspects o...
Article
Full-text available
Babbling bats A notable aspect of language development in humans is the babbling stage. During this time, toddlers make a range of specific sounds as they practice and imitate adult speech. Humans are not the only vocal learners, however, so might we expect such babbling among others? Fernandez et al . recorded the vocalizations of sac-winged bat p...
Article
Full-text available
Bats are highly gregarious animals, displaying a large spectrum of social systems with different organizational structures. One important factor shaping sociality is group stability. To maintain group cohesion and stability, bats often rely on vocal communication. The Honduran white bat, Ectophylla alba, exhibits an unusual social structure compare...
Preprint
Full-text available
Bats are highly gregarious animals, displaying a large spectrum of social systems with different organizational structures. One important factor shaping sociality is group stability. To maintain group cohesion and stability, bats often rely on social vocal communication. The Honduran white bat, Ectophylla alba exhibits an unusual social structure c...
Article
Full-text available
Training animals such as apes, gray parrots, or dolphins that communicate via arbitrary symbols with humans has revealed astonishing mental capacities that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. Albeit bats have not yet been trained to communicate via symbols with humans, we are convinced that some species, especially captive Pteropodid bats (“flying f...
Article
Full-text available
Social feedback plays an important role in human language development and in the vocal ontogeny of non-human animals. A special form of vocal feedback in humans, infant-directed speech – or motherese – facilitates language learning and is socially beneficial by increasing attention and arousal in the child. It is characterized by high pitch, expand...
Article
Full-text available
To make adaptive behavioural decisions, animals must acquire and process information from their natural and social environment. Reducing uncertainty regarding the actions and goals of conspecifics is especially important for group‐living animals. Bats are often highly gregarious and use versatile social vocalizations to mediate social interactions....
Article
Full-text available
The information that can possibly be encoded in a given vocalization is limited by the available acoustic space. Vocalizations composed of several elements have the potential to distribute information among distinct elements and thus encode various layers of information simultaneously. Correspondingly, the multiple messages hypothesis states that d...
Article
Full-text available
In social systems with alternative reproductive tactics, sneakers face a higher level of sperm competition than harem males and hence are predicted to allocate more resources to ejaculates. Antioxidants can protect sperm against oxidative stress, and thus, their allocation to the ejaculate may depend on mating tactic. In this study on the frugivoro...
Chapter
Full-text available
Acoustic signals are by far the best studied component of bats’ social communication. Various different vocalization types cover diverse social interactions, which are either under natural selection pressures, such as mother–pup recognition and group cohesion, or under sexual selection pressures, such as male–male aggression, territoriality, and co...
Article
Full-text available
Aggressive behaviours have an important impact on the social organization of animals and on the social status of individuals, especially in gregarious species. Agonistic interactions between territory holders are essential to set and reinforce territorial borders. Additionally, agonistic displays are used to demonstrate ownership of a territorial s...
Article
Full-text available
Investigating the role of visual information in animal communication often involves the experimental presentation of live stimuli, mirrors, dummies, still images, video recordings or computer animations. In recent years computer animations have received increased attention, as this technology allows the presentation of moving stimuli that exhibit a...
Conference Paper
Mating systems of bats are known to be very diverse. In many species, access to reproductive females is biased toward favored males. In Carollia perspicillata, females aggregate themselves at spots of interest. The control over these resources requires successfully guarding and protecting them against sneaking males. The energy investment for repro...

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