Uzh, University in Zürich, Switzerland

Many vertebrates use vocalisations to communicate; well-known examples include singing birds, croaking frogs, and barking dogs. These vocalisations are crucial to parenting, mate attraction, and a number of other behaviours.Little is known about when and where this behaviour emerged in vertebrates' evolution despite its significance. Comparative analyses can shed light on the evolutionary history of acoustic communication, but they frequently lack data from important groups that have not received enough attention.Acoustic abilities are widespread in land vertebrates:Thus, a multidisciplinary research team under the direction of the University of Zurich (UZH) has concentrated on previously unexplored species. They used vocal recordings and contextual behavioural data to support their claims that 53 species of four major clades of land vertebrates--turtles, tuataras, caecilians, and lungfishes--belong to these groups.According to first author Gabriel Jorgewich-Cohen, a PhD candidate at the Paleontological Institute and Museum of UZH, "this, along with a broad literature-based dataset including 1800 different species covering the entire spectrum shows that vocal communication is not only widespread in land vertebrates, but also evidence acoustic abilities in several groups previously considered non-vocal." For instance, many turtles that were previously believed to be mute are actually displaying extensive and sophisticated acoustic repertoires.Last common ancestor lived about 407 million years ago:The researchers combined pertinent information on the vocalisation abilities of species like lizards, snakes, salamanders, amphibians, and dipnoi with phylogenetic trait reconstruction techniques in order to look into the evolutionary history of acoustic communication in vertebrates. The researchers were able to map vocal communication in the vertebrate tree of life using data from well-known acoustic clades like mammals, birds, and frogs.According to Marcelo Sanchez, the study's lead author, "We were able to reconstruct acoustic communication as a shared trait among these animals, which is at least as old as their last common ancestor that lived approximately 407 million years before present."Acoustic communication did not evolve multiple times:Since the morphology of the hearing apparatus, its sensitivity, and the vocal tract vary greatly among vertebrates, the scientific consensus has thus far supported a convergent origin for acoustic communication among vertebrates. However, the UZH researchers claim that the evidence for this hypothesis is lacking pertinent information from important species that have previously been overlooked or thought to be non-vocal.According to Sanchez's findings, "Our results now show that acoustic communication did not evolve multiple times in diverse clades, but has a common and ancient evolutionary origin."( With inputs from ANI )Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

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singing birds, croaking frogs, or barking dogs are some well-known examples. ...