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Acoustic analysis of the alarm call of the Anatolian ground squirrel Spermophilus xanthoprymnus: a description and comparison with alarm calls of the Taurus S. taurensis and European S. citellus ground squirrels

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Abstract

The Anatolian ground squirrel Spermophilus xanthoprymnus like other ground-dwelling sciurids, emits alarm calls in the presence of predators. In this study, we provide a description of the acoustic structure of alarm call of this species and compare it to those of two closely related species, the Taurus ground squirrel Spermophilus taurensis and the European ground squirrel Spermophilus citellus. The alarm call of S. xanthoprymnus is a tonal sound mostly consisting of two different elements—the first element has low frequency modulation while the second element is highly frequency modulated. A similar basic structure can be found in the alarm calls of some other old world ground squirrel species of the genus Spermophilus, including S. taurensis and S. citellus. Despite this similarity, we found that these three species can be clearly distinguished on the basis of their alarm calls. Differences in the acoustic structure of S. xanthoprymnus and S. taurensis calls are especially remarkable, as these two species were considered to be conspecific until 2007. S. xanthoprymnus and S. taurensis were also demonstrated to have closer acoustic similarity, which is in contrast to results based on molecular data indicating that S. taurensis is most closely related to S. citellus.

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Acknowledgments

We thank P. Schnitzerová, M. Starcová, and M. Doležel for their help in the field; İ. Gündüz and C. Tez who made data collection on ground squirrels in Turkey possible; and D. Hardekopf for English corrections. We also thank V. Vohralík and four anonymous reviewers for comments and improvements of the manuscript. This study was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (project no. 0021620828) and the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic (project no. SP/2d4/61/08). The participation of RP was supported by an Internal Grant Agency of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague CIGA 51120/1313/3104.

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Correspondence to Irena Schneiderová.

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Communicated by: Sven Thatje

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Schneiderová, I., Policht, R. Acoustic analysis of the alarm call of the Anatolian ground squirrel Spermophilus xanthoprymnus: a description and comparison with alarm calls of the Taurus S. taurensis and European S. citellus ground squirrels. Naturwissenschaften 99, 55–64 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-011-0870-4

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