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A comparison of auditory brainstem responses across diving bird species

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Abstract

There is little biological data available for diving birds because many live in hard-to-study, remote habitats. Only one species of diving bird, the black-footed penguin (Spheniscus demersus), has been studied in respect to auditory capabilities (Wever et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 63:676–680, 1969). We, therefore, measured in-air auditory threshold in ten species of diving birds, using the auditory brainstem response (ABR). The average audiogram obtained for each species followed the U-shape typical of birds and many other animals. All species tested shared a common region of the greatest sensitivity, from 1000 to 3000 Hz, although audiograms differed significantly across species. Thresholds of all duck species tested were more similar to each other than to the two non-duck species tested. The red-throated loon (Gavia stellata) and northern gannet (Morus bassanus) exhibited the highest thresholds while the lowest thresholds belonged to the duck species, specifically the lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) and ruddy duck (Oxyura jamaicensis). Vocalization parameters were also measured for each species, and showed that with the exception of the common eider (Somateria mollisima), the peak frequency, i.e., frequency at the greatest intensity, of all species’ vocalizations measured here fell between 1000 and 3000 Hz, matching the bandwidth of the most sensitive hearing range.

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Acknowledgments

The Animal Care and Use Committees at both the University of Maryland and the U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (where the birds were housed and tested) approved all of the following procedures. We thank Edward Smith for the use of his software, Elizabeth Brittan-Powell for her training on ABR procedures, and Arthur Popper for his editing. Funding for this project was provided by several sources: National Institutes of Health (NIH) DC00436 to Catherine Carr, NIH P30 DC0466 to the University of Maryland Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing, by training grant DC-000466 from the National Institute of Deafness and Communicative Disorders of the National Institutes of Health, and from U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

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  1. US Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, 12100 Beech Forest Rd., Laurel, MD, 20708, USA

    Sara E. Crowell, Alicia M. Wells-Berlin, Glenn H. Olsen & Sally E. Yannuzzi

  2. Biology Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Sara E. Crowell, Catherine E. Carr & Sally E. Yannuzzi

  3. EcoSmart Research, Laurel, 20723, MD, USA

    Ronald E. Therrien

  4. Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, 02543, USA

    Darlene R. Ketten

  5. Department of Otology and Laryngology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Darlene R. Ketten

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  1. Sara E. Crowell
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  2. Alicia M. Wells-Berlin
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Crowell, S.E., Wells-Berlin, A.M., Carr, C.E. et al. A comparison of auditory brainstem responses across diving bird species. J Comp Physiol A 201, 803–815 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1024-5

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