Vocal communication originated more than 400 million years ago, according to a new study that also shows that animals such as turtles, once thought to be mute, have large and complex acoustic repertoires.
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications, in an article that seeks to unravel the evolutionary roots of this animal “vocalization”.
Analyzes suggest this is at least as old as the last common ancestor of all land vertebrates, which lived approximately 407 million years ago.
The use of sounds as a means of communication is common among several groups of vertebrates: the singing of birds, the croaking of frogs or the barking of dogs are some well-known examples and they play a key role in parental care , mate attraction, and many other behaviors.
Despite its importance, little is known about when and at what point in vertebrate evolutionary history this behavior arose.
To find out, an international research team, led by the University of Zurich, focused on species that had never been analyzed before, the institution said in a statement.
Specifically, the work includes evidence of 53 species from four large groups of terrestrial vertebrates – turtles, tuatara (reptiles), caecilians (amphibians) and lungfish – in the form of vocal recordings and contextual information about the behavior that accompanies the production of sounds. .
“This, together with a large literature-based dataset that includes 1,800 different species and covers the entire spectrum, shows that vocal communication is not only widespread in terrestrial vertebrates, but also evidences acoustic abilities in various groups that before they were considered non-vocal”. , analyzes the main author of the article, Gabriel Jorgewich-Cohen.
For example, many turtles, considered to be mute, actually exhibit large and complex acoustic repertoires.
To investigate the evolutionary origins of acoustic communication in vertebrates, the researchers combined relevant data on the vocalization abilities of species such as lizards, snakes, salamanders, amphibians, and lungfish with phylogenetic trait reconstruction methods.
Combined with data from known acoustic species groups such as mammals, birds and frogs, the researchers were able to map vocal communication on the vertebrate tree of life.
“We were able to reconstruct acoustic communication as a shared trait between these animals, which is at least as old as their last common ancestor, which lived approximately 407 million years before the present”, emphasizes Marcelo Sánchez, who led the study.
Until now, the scientific consensus defended a convergent origin of acoustic communication between vertebrates, since the morphology of the auditory apparatus and its sensitivity, as well as that of the vocal tract, vary considerably between them.
But the new results show that acoustic communication has not evolved multiple times in various groups of species, but instead has a common and ancient evolutionary origin.
Source: TSF
