Quantifying Responses to Playback: One, Many, or Composite Multivariate Measures?

Abstract

Acoustic communication is one of the better studied areas of animal behaviour (Halliday and Slater 1973). Part of the reason for the large number of studies in this area is the relative ease with which sounds can be recorded and broadcast. This has permitted experiments in the laboratory and in the field in which sound is played to animals and their responses noted. Such playback experiments have been conducted on a large number of species, notably songbirds and anuran amphibians (see chapters by Falls and by Gerhardt respectively in this volume), but including a wide diversity of taxonomic groups; from whales (e.g. Clark and Clark 1980) to wolves (e.g. Harrington 1989), from reef fish (e.g. Myrberg and Riggio 1985) to rodents (e.g. Cherry 1989), and from deer (e.g. Clutton-Brock and Albon 1979, McComb chapter in this volume) to Drosophila (e.g. Bennet-Clark and Ewing 1969). As argued by Catchpole (this volume), playback is now regarded as an important part of any integrated investigation of a communication system.