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Evidence for Vocal Flexibility in Wild Siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) Ululating Scream Phrases

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Abstract

Nonhuman primate vocalizations have been traditionally described as stereotyped and most likely genetically determined. However, there is increasing evidence of flexibility with a wide variety of species demonstrating the ability to change aspects of their calls, such as note order and phrase duration. We assess patterns of variation in note order and temporal features in wild siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) phrases. We used three types of analyses on 1,015 ululating scream phrases (US-II), containing 21,609 notes, produced by ten siamang groups at three field sites. First, to assess similarity or differences in the organization of notes in the US-II phrase, we calculated the Levenshtein distance (LD), which quantifies the similarity of sequences of strings through the number of insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to transform one into the other. Second, we used a supervised classification approach to see how well we could assign US-II phrases to their groups and sites. Third, we compared five unsupervised clustering algorithms to investigate the tendency to cluster in US-II phrase types. The note order of the US-II phrase was variable shown by relatively large LD values; there also were significant mean differences between groups. Supervised classification using support vector machine and leave-one-out cross-validation returned 89.5% accuracy for site and 53.1% for group. For unsupervised clustering, the most stable solution based on the Silhouette coefficient returned four unique clusters or classes of the US-II phrase in our dataset. Our findings indicate high levels of intragroup variation in the US-II phrase and are consistent with previous reports on siamang vocalizations being flexible. Quantifying variation in the siamang US-II phrase provides a crucial first step in understanding the evolutionary forces that shaped these signals and the potential information they convey.

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Acknowledgements

This project was funded through the Fulbright U.S. Student Research Program with a 2017-2018 grant. Further funding was provided by the SIU Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) Scholarship. This project followed the permits and protocol approvals of the Illinois Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Southern Illinois University (protocol number: 17-007) and the foreign research approval from the Indonesia Ministry of Research and Technology (RISTEK-315-IM2KAB20559). This project also collaborated with the conservation organizations Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari (YEL), the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), and Taman Nasional Gunung Leuser (TNGL). The authors thank the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF), key supporters Rudi Putra, Matthew Nowak, Isa, Rizqi, and field assistants Supri, Asan, Aulia, Sahril, Dian, Ucok, Wandi, Yansa, Alwi, Fredri, Abdusalam, Roni, Ziva Justinek, and Amelie Desmoulin. They also thank Dr. Ulrich Reichard and Dr. Thomas Terleph for their guidance and support as well as Dr. Ellen Garland, Dr. Marco Gamba, and Anna Zanoli for their help with the Levenshtein distance data analysis. Thanks to the two reviewers and the editor who provided comments and questions that improved the final version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

    Justin D’Agostino

  2. University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA

    Stephanie Spehar

  3. Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

    Abdullah Abdullah

  4. K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Dena J. Clink

Authors
  1. Justin D’Agostino
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  2. Stephanie Spehar
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  3. Abdullah Abdullah
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  4. Dena J. Clink
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Contributions

JD and DC conceived the research design and methodology. JD conducted fieldwork with the guidance and support of AA. JD annotated the spectrogram data. JD performed the Levenshtein Distance (LD) and ANOVA statistical analyses. DC assisted with LD analyses and performed the classification statistical analyses. JD and DC wrote the manuscript; SS and AA provided guidance and editorial advice.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Justin D’Agostino.

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Handling Editor: Joanna (Jo) M. Setchell

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D’Agostino, J., Spehar, S., Abdullah, A. et al. Evidence for Vocal Flexibility in Wild Siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) Ululating Scream Phrases. Int J Primatol 44, 1127–1148 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-023-00384-5

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