ArticleScientific reports2016
Evidence for contact calls in fish: conspecific vocalisations and ambient soundscape influence group cohesion in a nocturnal species.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- Uncovering the acoustic ecology of sympatric coral-dwelling fish with portable audio-video arrays.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Social vocalizations indicate behavioural type inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Calling to the collective: contact calling rates within groups of disc-winged bats do not vary by kinship or association.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Understanding collective behavior through neurobiology.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2024Review
- Impact of small boat sound on the listening space of Pempheris adspersa, Forsterygion lapillum, Alpheus richardsoni and Ovalipes catharus.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Increased water temperature and turbidity act independently to alter social behavior in guppies (Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Lateral line morphology, sensory perception and collective behaviour in African cichlid fish.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Noise-induced masking of hearing in a labyrinth fish: effects on sound detection in croaking gouramis.PeerJ · 2022Article
- Ocean acidification effects on fish hearing.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Listening forward: approaching marine biodiversity assessments using acoustic methods.Royal Society open science · 2020Review
- Immune-challenged vampire bats produce fewer contact calls.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Ecology of sound communication in fishes.Fish and fisheries (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Aggregating behaviour in invasive Caribbean lionfish is driven by habitat complexity.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Underwater sound from vessel traffic reduces the effective communication range in Atlantic cod and haddock.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Exploring spatial and temporal trends in the soundscape of an ecologically significant embayment.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Temporal patterns in the soundscape of the shallow waters of a Mediterranean marine protected area.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Soundscapes provide a new tool for the study of fish communities. Bigeyes (Pempheris adspersa) are nocturnal planktivorous reef fish, feed in loose shoals and are soniferous. These vocalisations have been suggested to be contact calls to maintain group cohesion, however direct evidence for this is absent, despite the fact that contact calls are well documented for many other vertebrates, including marine mammals. For fish, direct evidence for group cohesion signals is restricted to the use of visual and hydrodynamic cues. In support of adding vocalisation as a contributing cue, our laboratory experiments show that bigeyes significantly increased group cohesion when exposed to recordings of ambient reef sound at higher sound levels while also decreasing vocalisations. These patterns of behaviour are consistent with acoustic masking. When exposed to playback of conspecific vocalisations, the group cohesion and vocalisation rates of bigeyes both significantly increased. These results provide the first direct experimental support for the hypotheses that vocalisations are used as contact calls to maintain group cohesion in fishes, making fish the evolutionarily oldest vertebrate group in which this phenomenon has been observed, and adding a new dimension to the interpretation of nocturnal reef soundscapes.
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Registered trials
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