The sustainable effect of selection for behaviour on vocalization in the silver fox
2008
Volodin , I.A., Lomonosov Moscow State Univ. (Russian Federation) | Volodina, E.V., Moscow Zoo (Russian Federation). Scientific Research Department | Trut, L.N. | Kharlamova, A.V., Russian Academy of Sciences. Siberian Branch, Novosibirsk (Russian Federation). Institute of Cytology and Geneticist
The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) and timber wolf (Canis lupus) have a long evolutionary history as independent species, therefore their vocal repertoires could be very distinctive already at the beginning of domestication. By this reason, these two species could not serve a good model for estimation of domestication effects on the vocal behaviour. Ideally, the vocal behaviour of domesticated and nondomesticated animals within species should be compared. Such a good model, used in this study, is coming from silver foxes (Vulpes vulpes), selected for tame or aggressive behaviour towards people, in comparison with the control group of unselected foxes. We recorded сalls from two fox samples of each of the three selection groups, produced towards the same unfamiliar experimenter. Basing on the spectrographic analysis, we subdivided the calls into ten types within two structural classes, tonal and noisy. The Unselected and Aggressive foxes of both samples used the same call type sets, whereas the Tame foxes of both samples used a distinctive call type set. Only three of ten call types occurred in all fox groups. Therefore, the selection for aggressive behaviour did not affect the fox vocal behaviour, whereas the selection for tame behaviour resulted in drastic changing the call set, produced toward people. The surprising similarity of results, received for different fox samples within the selection groups suggests the genetic determination of vocal behaviour in foxes, either selected or unselected for behaviour
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