Unusual Avian Vocal Mechanism Facilitates Encoding of Body Size

URIBARRI, GONZALO; RODRÍGUEZ-CAJARVILLE, MARÍA JOSÉ; TUBARO, PABLO?LUIS; GOLLER, FRANZ; MINDLIN, GABRIEL B.

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: ridge; Año: 2020 vol. 124 p. 1 - 4

0031-9007

In this work we study the sound production mechanism of the raspy sounding song of the white-tippedplantcutter (Phytotoma rutila), a species with a most unusual vocalization. The biomechanics involved inthe production of this song, and scaling arguments, allowed us to predict the precise way in which body sizeis encoded in its vocalizations. We tested this prediction through acoustic analysis of recorded songs,computational modeling of its unusual vocal strategy, and inspection of museum specimens captured acrosssoutheastern and south-central South America.