Effects of different levels of song overlapping on singing behaviour in male territorial nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos)

In signalling interactions, animals can directly address information to a specific individual. Vocal overlapping is such a signalling strategy used in songbirds, anurans, and insects. In songbirds, numerous studies using high rates of song overlap to simulate an escalating situation have shown that song overlapping is perceived as a threatening signal by interacting and by listening (eavesdropping) individuals, indicating a high social relevance of song overlapping. Here we present a playback experiment on nocturnally singing male territorial nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos). Using three different rates of song overlap (1, 25, or 50%), we tested whether or not lower levels of song overlapping act as a signal of aggressive intent and if birds would increase the intensity of their response with increasing level of song overlapping. Subjects did not vary song duration in response to the different playback treatments but increasingly interrupted their singing with increasing overlap by the three playback treatments. The effects persisted even after the playback ceased to overlap and switched to an alternating singing mode. These results expand on previous studies by showing that song overlapping is interpreted as an aggressive signal even when it is used at low or moderate levels. They suggest that, within the range tested here, increasing levels of song overlapping are perceived to be increasingly aggressive.     

Do echolocation calls of wild colony-living Bechstein's bats (Myotis bechsteinii) provide individual-specific signatures?

Social animals often use vocal communication signals that contain individual signatures. As bats emit echolocation calls several times per second to orient in space, these might seem ideal candidates for conveying the caller's individual identity as a free by-product. From a proximate perspective, however, coding of caller identity is hampered by the simple acoustic structure of echolocation signals, by their task-specific design and by propagation loss. We investigated the occurrence of individual signatures in echolocation calls in individually marked, free-living Bechstein's bats (Myotis bechsteinii) in a situation with defined social context in the field. The bats belonged to two different colonies, for both of which genetic data on relatedness structure was available. While our data clearly demonstrate situation specificity of call structure, the evidence for individual-specific signatures was relatively weak. We could not identify a robust and simple parameter that would convey the caller's identity despite the situation-specific call variability. Discriminant function analysis assigned calls to call sequences with good performance, but worsened drastically when tested with other sequences from the same bats. Therefore, we caution against concluding from a satisfactory discrimination performance with identical training and test sequences that individual bats can reliably be told apart by echolocation calls. At least the information contained in a single call sequence seems not to be sufficient for that purpose. Starting frequencies did give the best discrimination between individuals, and it was also this parameter that was correlated with genetic relatedness in one of our two study colonies. Echolocation calls could serve as an additional source of information for individual recognition in Bechstein's bats societies, while it is unlikely that a large number of individuals could be reliably identified in different situations based on echolocation alone.     

Baboon loud calls advertise male quality: acoustic features and their relation to rank,age, and exhaustion

Free-ranging adult male baboons give loud two-syllable wahoo calls during dawn choruses, interactions between groups, when chasing females, and in aggressive interactions with other males. Previous research has shown that the rate and duration of these contest wahoos are correlated with a males competitive ability: high-ranking males call more often, call at faster rates, and call for longer bouts than do low-ranking males. Here we report that acoustic features of wahoos also reveal information about male competitive ability. High-ranking males give wahoos with higher fundamental frequencies (F0) and longer hoo syllables. Within-subject analyses revealed that, as males fall in rank, the hoo syllables tend to shorten within a period of months. As males age and continue to fall in rank, F0 declines, hoo syllables shorten, and formant dispersion decreases. Independent of age and rank, within bouts of calling F0 declines and hoo syllables become shorter. Because wahoos are often given while males are running or leaping through trees, variation in these acoustic features may function as an indicator of a males stamina. The acoustic features of contest wahoos thus potentially allow listeners to assess a males competitive ability.Communicated by C. Nunn     

中国省际间对内开放对驱动工业绿色创新空间趋同的影响

针对我国省际间对内开放度不平衡发展下工业绿色创新可能存在的地区异质性及空间趋同性,构建对内开放度评价指标体系,利用组合评价方法对30个省级单位的对内开放度进行了综合评价,并通过基尼系数等变异指标比较省际间对内开放度的地区差异,利用2005~2014年的省级面板数据建立空间计量模型检验了省际间对内开放度约束下工业绿色创新的空间趋同性.研究发现：我国省际间对内开放度在时间维度上表现出增加-降低的发展特点,而空间维度上存在东高西低的地区异质性特征.其中,东部地区间对内开放度的内部差异最大,西部次之,中部最小.我国整体及东部地区省际间工业绿色创新的分散离散程度将随时间推移而变化,但中西部地区工业绿色创新波动较大,尚需进一步调整改善;我国整体及东中西部地区工业绿色创新均会随时间推移达到一致的长期均衡,并且其邻近地区因经济发展情况、技术环境、研发水平等特征相似而呈现出的长期相互趋同.加速省际间对内开放、提高经济发展水平、适当放宽环境管制政策是促进我国整体和东部地区工业绿色创新能力提升的重要因素;提高经济发展水平和科学适宜的环境管制强度是促进中部和西部地区工业绿色创新能力提升的重要因素.省际间对内开放度的地区异质性来源及省际间对内开放约束下工业绿色创新的空间趋同情况,有利于我国在新经济形势下缩小省际间对内开放差异、加速对内开放,进一步提升工业绿色创新能力.     

黑河流域水汽输送及收支特征

利用NCEP/NCAR逐日再分析资料对黑河流域的水汽输送和收支特征进行了计算分析,结果表明:西风环流使得源于大西洋和北冰洋的水汽成为黑河流域空中水汽的主要来源,流域内水汽输送以自西向东的纬向输送为主,东边界输出强度强于西边界输入强度,纬向净输入量为负;经向输送为自北向南且在强度上不及纬向输送,北边界输入强度强于南边界输出强度,经向净输入量为正。700 hPa气层流域南部的水汽辐合辐散特征随季节变化显著,冬季为水汽辐散区,夏季为水汽辐合区;流域北部没有明显的水汽辐合辐散特征。全流域多年平均水汽输入量为997.3 km³,输出量为1 046.1 km³,净输入量-48.8 km³,20世纪60年代中期以后流域水汽净输入量呈现增加趋势。黑河流域北部荒漠区年内各季均为水汽输出期,中低层大气(地面~500 hPa)为主要的水汽输出层;南部山区年内6-9月为水汽输入期,低层大气(地面~700 hPa)为水汽输入层,中高层大气(700~300 hPa)为水汽输出层。据大气水平衡原理,黑河流域多年平均蒸发量约为84 km³。     

An International Comparative Analysis on China’s Economic Growth and the Convergence in Energy Intensity Gap and Its Economic Mechanism

Abstract

In this paper, the authors have empirically analyzed the convergence in per capita GDP gap and the convergence in the variation of energy intensity with respect to the change of per capita GDP between China and eight developed countries. Then, the authors run a regression on the impact of decisive factors of economic growth on energy intensity and its change, so as to find out the economic mechanism of energy intensity gap changing with respect to the variation of economic growth. This study concludes that: First, there is a convergence in per capita GDP gap between China and the eight developed countries. With the convergence in per capita GDP gap, the energy intensity gap between China and eight different countries also converge, and the convergence rate of the latter is faster than that of the former, i.e. if the per capita GDP gap between China and the eight developed countries decreases by 1%, the energy intensity gap between them will correspondingly decrease by 1.552%. Second, the energy intensity decreases with the improvement of industrial structure, the rising of energy prices, the advances of technology, and the expansion of investment in fixed assets, and it slightly increases with the increase of FDI. Third, the energy intensity gap between China and eight developed countries narrows with the lessening of the difference in fixed assets investment, energy prices, and technological progress between China and eight developed countries, yet increases with the narrowing of the difference in FDI, and has no significant correlation with the difference in industrial structure. Fourth, the narrowing of difference in per capita GDP between China and the eight developed countries can result in the lessening of energy intensity gap, whose economic mechanism is that the decisive factors, such as difference in investment, technology, and the competition mechanism of prices, which can determine the difference in economic growth, can significantly affect the energy intensity gap.     

我国文化和旅游产业融合效率的时空动态演化及其驱动机理

采用仁慈型交叉DEA效率模型、冷热点分析、Tobit模型等方法对2010—2019年我国文化产业和旅游产业融合效率的时空动态演化及驱动机理进行了全面探析,结果发现:①2010—2019年我国文化产业和旅游产业融合效率呈波动上升趋势。②研究期内,文化和旅游产业融合效率呈“东部—中部—西部”依次递减,而融合效率增长率呈“东部—西部—中部”依次递减,但融合增长率都不高。③研究期内,文化产业和旅游产业融合效率呈区域差异性和集聚性。④从文化和旅游产业融合效率驱动机制剖析来看,经济发展、居民消费水平、地区城市化水平、信息发达程度、创新能力、政府政策支持力度是我国文化和旅游产业融合效率的驱动因素,促使效率时空动态演化。     

Unusually high levels of extrapair paternity in a duetting songbird with long-term pair bonds

Previous studies suggest that extrapair young are very rare or absent in socially monogamous avian species that produce vocal duets. These results are generally consistent with functional hypotheses suggesting that duets may signal commitment between partners, or aid males as a paternity guard to ensure genetic as well as social monogamy. Additionally, species that exhibit social monogamy with the same partner across multiple breeding seasons tend to exhibit low levels of extrapair paternity, so duetting species that mate for life may be particularly likely to exhibit genetic monogamy. This study examined the social and genetic mating systems of California towhees (Pipilo crissalis), a duetting species thought to have life-long pair bonds. Observation of a color-banded population confirmed that California towhees exhibit long-term social monogamy. Known social families were genotyped at four microsatellite loci with high allelic diversity. Unexpectedly, paternity exclusion indicated that at least 13 of 31 (42%) nests contained extrapair young. All chicks exhibited maternal alleles, but 21 of 81 (26%) young were not the offspring of social fathers. Thus, in contrast to previous work, this study documents high frequencies of extrapair young among socially monogamous duetting birds with long-term pair bonds.     

Song dialects do not restrict gene flow in an urban population of the orange-tufted sunbird, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Nectarinia osea</Emphasis>

Geographic variation in vocalizations is widespread in passerine birds, but its origins and maintenance remain unclear. In this study, we test the hypothesis that song dialect, a culturally transmitted trait, is related to the population genetic structure of the orange-tufted sunbird, Nectarinia osea. To address this, we compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence variation together with allele frequencies at five microsatellite loci from an urban population of sunbirds exhibiting two distinct song dialects on a microgeographic scale. Our findings reveal no association between dialect membership and genetic composition. All genetic measures, from both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, indicate high levels of gene flow between both dialect populations. The low F _ST values obtained from mtDNA and microsatellite analysis imply that the variation among dialects does not account for more than 2%, at best, of the overall genetic variation found in the entire population. These measures fall well within the range of similar measures obtained in other studies of species exhibiting vocal dialects, most of which fail to detect any dialect-based genetic differentiation. The persistence of dialects in the orange-tufted sunbird may thus best be explained by dispersal of individuals across dialect boundaries and possibly from surrounding areas, followed by postdispersal vocal matching. Because genetic structuring appears weaker than cultural structure in this species, we discuss the behavioral mechanisms underlying dialect maintenance in the presence of apparent gene flow.