The "Law of Brevity" in animal communication: Sex-specific signaling optimization is determined by call amplitude rather than duration.

ABSTRACT: The efficiency of informational transfer is one of the key aspects of any communication system. The informational coding economy of human languages is often demonstrated by their almost universal fit to Zipf's "Law of Brevity," expressing negative relationship between word length and its usage frequency. Animal vocal systems, however, provided mixed results in their adherence to this relationship, potentially due to conflicting evolutionary pressures related to differences in signaling range and communicational needs. To examine this potential parallel between human and animal vocal communication, and also to explore how divergent, sex-specific, communicational settings affect signaling efficiency within a species, we examined the complete vocal repertoire of rock hyraxes (Procavia cape

SUBMITTER: Demartsev V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6906988 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature