Ke Deng

Chinese Academy of Sciences | CAS · Chengdu Institute of Biology

Vocal communication plays an important role in survival, reproduction, and animal social association. Birds and mammals produce complex vocal sequence to convey context-dependent information. Vocalizations are conspicuous features of the behavior of most anuran species (frogs and toads), and males usually alter their calling strategies according to...

动物社会网络分析法(animal social network analysis, ASNA)是一套用于研究动物社会性、量化个体间各种社会关系、揭示个体行为与社会结构动态之间联系的工具, 它被广泛应用于多种动物类群的行为学研究。该分析方法所提供的一系列指标也非常适用于探究动物的声音交流及鸣声结构。在此, 本文首先简要介绍了网络分析法的基本概念及一些常用的指标; 然后基于野外和室内研究实例, 阐述了如何利用ASNA建立声音通讯网络、量化声音交流, 以及将ASNA与被动声学监测技术相结合的应用前景; 随后探讨了ASNA在分析鸣声相似性及鸣声地理变异中的优势; 最后概述了ASNA在解析鸣声结构和句法规则中的应用。ASNA为研究动物通讯网络以及声音信号的适应性进化提供了新的视角和新的思路。

Alarm signals and cues are crucial to animal survival and vary greatly across species. Eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm signals and cues can provide eavesdroppers with information about potential threats. In addition to acoustic alarm signals, evidence has accumulated that chemical alarm cues and disturbance cues can also play a role in alerti...

It has been hypothesized that animal populations respond nonlinearly to the environment, and such responses are important to understand the effects of climate change population dynamics of small mammals in arid environments at northern latitudes. The aim of this study was to test the following hypotheses: (1) that small rodent populations increase...

Communication signals by both human and non-human animals are often interrupted in nature. One advantage of multimodal cues is to maintain the salience of interrupted signals. We studied a frog that naturally can have silent gaps within its call. Using video/audio-playbacks, we presented females with interrupted mating calls with or without a simul...

Mate choice in frogs depends heavily on acoustic communication, and females in many species possess an inherent preference for longer and/or more complex calls. Recently, it has become clear that conspecific chemical cues can also be useful in attracting potential mates in anuran species. However, how conspecific chemical cues influence mate choice...

Background Signal detection is crucial to survival and successful reproduction, and animals often modify behavioral decisions based on information they obtained from the social context. Undeniably, the decision-making in male-male competition and female choice of anurans (frogs and toads) depends heavily on acoustic signals. However, increasing emp...

Animal choruses, such as those found in insects and frogs, are often intermittent. Thus females sampling males in the chorus might have to remember the location of the potential mates’ calls during periods of silence. Although a number of studies have shown that frogs use and prefer multimodal mating signals, usually acoustic plus visual, it is not...

There is increasing evidence that many anurans use multimodal cues to detect, discriminate and/or locate conspecifics and thus modify their behaviors. To date, however, most studies have focused on the roles of multimodal cues in female choice or male-male interactions. In the present study, we conducted an experiment to investigate whether male se...

Gut microbiota play a critical role in orchestrating metabolic homeostasis of the host. However, the crosstalk between host and microbial symbionts in small mammals are rarely illustrated. We used male Brandt’s voles (Lasiopodomys brandtii) to test the hypothesis that gut microbiota and host neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine (NE), interact...

Abstract Social network analysis has been widely used to investigate the dynamics of social interactions and the evolution of social complexity across a range of taxa. Anuran species are highly dependent on vocal communication in mate choice; however, these species have rarely been the subject of social network analysis. The present study used soci...

Seasonal brain plasticity contributes to a variety of physiological and behavioral processes. We hypothesized that variations in GnRH expression and cell proliferation facilitated seasonal breeding and food hoarding. Here, we reported seasonal changes in sexual and social behavior, GnRH expression and brain cell proliferation, and the role of photo...

Kin selection theory predicts that individuals should generally behave less aggressively or more amicably towards relatives than non-kin. However, how individuals treat conspecifics depends on genetic relatedness but also on the ecological context, which influences the benefits and costs of their interactions. In this study, we used microsatellite...

Animals often interact non-randomly with conspecifics, and association preferences can differ across life-history stages to maximize individuals' fitness. Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) are a social rodent that live in highly seasonal habitats and display seasonal fluctuations in population density, growth rate and the size of overlapped...

On December 5, 2012, a specimen of Chodsigoa caovansunga Lunde, Musser and Son, 2003 was collected at Manhao, Gejiu, Yunnan (N23Degrees Celsius00'43.0'', E103Degrees Celsius26'18.9'', 350 m asl). This finding is the first recorded distribution of C. caovansunga in China and outside of the type locality (Mt. Tay Con Linh II, Ha Giang, Vietnam). The...