Longitudinal recordings of the vocalizations of immature Gombe chimpanzees for developmental studies

Abstract

Many researchers are interested in chimpanzee vocal communication, both as an important aspect of chimpanzee social behavior and as a source of insights into the evolution of human language. Nonetheless, very little is known about how chimpanzee vocal communication develops from infancy to adulthood. The largest dataset of audiorecordings from free-living immature chimpanzees was collected by the late Hetty van de Rijt-Plooij and Frans X. Plooij at Gombe National Park, Tanzania (1971–1973). These recordings have not yet been analysed. Therefore, the most extensive effort to study the development of chimpanzee vocalizations remains unfinished. The audiospecimens total over 10 h on 28 tapes, including 20 tapes focusing on 17 specific immature individuals with a total of 1,136 recordings. In order to make this dataset available to more researchers, the analogue sound recordings were digitized and stored in the Macaulay Library and the Dryad Repository. In addition, the original notes on the contexts of the calls were translated and transcribed from Dutch into English.

An archive of longitudinal recordings of the vocalizations of adult Gombe chimpanzees

“…2 in ref. 22 ). The recordist also recorded a verbal commentary before or after the vocalizations that included the names of the chimpanzees and the names of the vocalizations they produced, together with a description of the behaviour surrounding the vocalizations.…”

“…As described in reference 22 , after the sound recordings were made, analogue audio specimens were selected from the tape and coupled with metadata that consisted of the transcriptions of the verbal commentary in Dutch and a number of other pieces of information that are described under Data Records. The analogue audio specimens were created by listening to the original recordings and cutting out the stretches of tape containing chimpanzee vocalizations.…”

“…The calls have not yet been analysed, but have been digitized and archived at the Macaulay Library (Data Citation 1) with extensive metadata (see section ‘Data Records’) for each recording. We previously described the dataset of recordings from immature individuals 22 ; here we describe the dataset of recordings from adults.…”

Open data for evolutionary synthesis: an introduction to the NESCent collection

“…The two other contributions in the initial collection, from Zehr et al 9 and Plooij et al 10 make available for reuse uniquely valuable observational data from primates. Zehr et al 9 report the life history data for 3,627 captive individuals from 27 different strepsirrhines (lemurs, lorises and galagos).…”

“…The data are particularly valuable in combination with the large collection of associated biological samples and the live research colonies at the Duke Lemur Center. Plooij et al 10 describe the largest dataset of recordings from free-living juvenile chimpanzees, originally collected at Gombe National Park, Tanzania in the early 1970s. The original recordings of 16 animals have been digitized by the Macauley Library and annotated with detailed contextual field notes.…”