Sound production in four damselfish (Dascyllus) species: phyletic relationships?

Abstract

Most studies of fish sounds show that the sounds are species-specific, with unique spectral and timing characteristics. This raises the question as to whether these sounds can be used to understand phyletic relationships between species and which acoustic parameters are subject to variation between species. In the present study, 597 sounds (and 2540 pulses) related to signal jumps of four Dascyllus species (Dascyllus aruanus, Dascyllus trimaculatus, Dascyllus albisella, and Dascyllus flavicaudus) from different geographic regions (Madagascar, Moorea, Rangiroa, and Hawaii) were analysed. It was possible to discern species-specific sounds, but also variation in sounds between populations. Large variations in sound length were found between Dascyllus species, whereas differences in interpulse duration were found to be variable between populations. In the regions where species live in sympatry, it appears that they restrict the variability in their sounds. This could comprise evidence of adaptation with character displacement of sonic characteristics where different species co-occur. However, sonic characteristics still overlapped substantially between species, suggesting that females would need to sample more than one sound and potentially use other cues to discriminate between species.

Sound production mechanism inGobius paganellus(Gobiidae)

“…Differences between fish population vocal repertoires have already been described (Fine, 1978;Parmentier et al, 2005;Phillips and Johnston, 2008;Parmentier et al, 2009;Parmentier et al, 2011a;Tellechea et al, 2011). In the case of G. paganellus, both populations were able to make pulsed and tonal sounds but we observed more pulsed sounds from fish of the tidal zone in France and more tonal sounds in the Italian population.…”

Diversity and complexity in the acoustic behaviour of Dacyllus flavicaudus (Pomacentridae)

“…All these sounds were emitted at the same interval of frequency and had the same kind of sound spectrum, showing they were constructed on the basis of the same mechanism. Differences in the main frequency and in the duration of the pulses are related to fish size in Pomacentridae (Myrberg et al 1993;Lobel and Mann 1995;Lobel 1997, Maruska et al 2007;Colleye et al 2009;Parmentier et al 2009). Consequently, the differences between the calls, namely the number of pulses, the pulse period and the loudness are due to the fish physiology reflecting the behaviour and its motivational state.…”

Mechanisms of Fish Sound Production

“…Numerous pomacentrids produce series of pulses in male courtship that have been shown to carry species-specific information (Myrberg et al 1978(Myrberg et al , 1993Parmentier et al 2009;Colleye et al 2011). Larger individuals produce lower frequencies and a pulse waveform with a slow exponential decay, suggesting swimbladder resonance and potentially refuting the forced-response model (Lobel and Mann 1995;Colleye et al 2009Colleye et al , 2011.…”