ArticleScientific reports2017
Formants provide honest acoustic cues to body size in American alligators.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Rethinking the frequency code: a meta-analytic review of the role of acoustic body size in communicative phenomena.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Learnt formant modulation via upper vocal tract movements in a marine mammal.Discover animals · 2026Article
- Roars, Rumbles, and Resonance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Crocodylian Acoustic Signals.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- The velar chord and dynamic integration of the gular valve in crocodylians.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2025Article
- Cold-blooded culture? Assessing cultural behaviour in reptiles and its potential conservation implications.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Formant analysis of vertebrate vocalizations: achievements, pitfalls, and promises.BMC biology · 2025Review
- Gharial acoustic signaling: Novel underwater pops are temporally based, context-dependent, seasonally stable, male-specific, and individually distinctive.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- An intermediate crocodylian linking two extant gharials from the Bronze Age of China and its human-induced extinction.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Early life differences in behavioral predispositions in two Alligatoridae species.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Chest beats as an honest signal of body size in male mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei).Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Spatial memory is as important as weapon and body size for territorial ownership in a lekking hummingbird.Scientific reports · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In many vertebrates, acoustic cues to body size are encoded in resonance frequencies of the vocal tract ("formants"), rather than in the rate of tissue vibration in the sound source ("pitch"). Anatomical constraints on the vocal tract's size render formants honest cues to size in many bird and mammal species, but it is not clear whether this correlation evolved convergently in these two clades, or whether it is widespread among amniotes (mammals, birds, and non-avian reptiles). We investigated the potential for honest acoustic cues in the bellows of adult American alligators and found that formant spacing provided highly reliable cues to body size, while presumed correlates of the source signal did not. These findings held true for both sexes and for all bellows whether produced in or out of water. Because birds and crocodilians are the last extant Archosaurians and share common ancestry with all extinct dinosaurs, our findings support the hypothesis that dinosaurs used formants as cues to body size. The description of formants as honest signals in a non-avian reptile combined with previous evidence from birds and mammals strongly suggests that the principle of honest signalling via vocal tract resonances may be a broadly shared trait among amniotes.
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