Males often vocalize during courtship in a wide variety of taxa, including insects, amphibians, birds and mammals, but the courtship songs of male house mice are ultrasonic, and inaudible to human ears. Studying the ultrasonic vocalizations or USVs of mice therefore requires special microphones and spectrograms to visualize the characteristic features of different calls. Researchers from the Penn-Zala Group at the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna) recently developed an improved method for automating the detection of mouse USVs, which they now used to investigate a way of inducing male mice to vocalize.

The article “Primed to vocalize: wild-derived male house mice increase vocalization rate and diversity after a previous encounter with a female” by Sarah M. Zala, Doris Nicolakis, Maria Adelaide Marconi, Anton Noll, Thomas Ruf, Peter Balazs, and Dustin J. Penn was published in Plos one.

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(Web editor, 14 December 2020)

Ornithologists have used multilocus molecular data and species distribution models to study the phylogenetics and phylogeography of the white-backed woodpecker. The white-backed woodpecker is an indicator of near-natural forests, and has an important European occurrence in Austria's mountain forests. Its importance for nature conservation lies in this indicator function. Like the great spotted woodpecker, but with gaps, it is distributed over the whole of Eurasia and has developed some island forms in the Far East. Hans Winkler et al. had already shown in 2005 that the Okinawa woodpecker, which has long been incorrectly classified, is a direct relative of the white-backed woodpecker.

The researchers emphasize that although this species of woodpecker is not classified as endangered, the highest genetic diversity is found in the population in the Białowieża Forest in Poland (the last remnant of a primeval forest in the lowlands of Europe) and in the Carpathian forests. These natural areas protect the genetic diversity of the white-backed woodpecker populations - an indication of the importance of maintaining near-natural forests for biodiversity.

The article "Phylogeography of a widespread Palaearctic forest bird species: The White-backed Woodpecker (Aves, Picidae)" by Jean‐Marc Pons, David Campión, Giorgio Chiozzi, Antonia Ettwein, Jean‐Louis Grangé, Łukasz Kajtoch, Tomasz D. Mazgajski, Marko Rakovic, Hans Winkler and Jérôme Fuchs was published in the journal Zoologica Scripta.

(Web editor, 2 December 2020)

House mice emit complex ultrasonic vocalizations or USVs, which are above the range of human hearing. A recent study from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna) found that the USVs emitted by wild male mice contain distinctive individual signatures that are stable over time. Their findings show that these signals potentially mediate individual recognition.

USVs are surprisingly complex at many levels of organization, and the researchers found signatures of individual identity at every level that they analysed, including emission rates, mean frequency and duration, the number of different types of USVs, and even the length of silent intervals between calls. Moreover, using a machine learning algorithm, they were able to assign approximately 90% of recordings to the correct individual.

The article "Ultrasonic courtship vocalizations of male house mice contain distinct individual signatures" by Maria Adelaide Marconi, Doris Nicolakis, Reyhaneh Abbasi, Dustin J. Penn, and Sarah M.Zala was published in Animal Behaviour.

(Web editor,  4 November 2020)

As local temperatures rise, some animals and plants try to migrate to more favourable climatic regions. However, human activities, such as agriculture and urbanisation, are destroying and fragmenting habitats. Many species are unable to to migrate  to better habitats.

Those species with higher “adaptive resilience” are more likely to keep up with changes in climate and survive. An international team of researchers including Dr. Steve Smith, the Head of the Genetics Lab at the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, studied three similar species of rainbowfishes from different climatic regions of Australia: the subtropics, the desert and the temperate region.  The researchers found a strong association between genetic responses and heat tolerance. The sub-tropical variety of these fishes showed much greater adaptability to warming temperatures than the temperate species. The implications of the study can be extended to many non-migratory animals and plants under pressure due to climate change.

The article "Adaptation of plasticity to projected maximum temperatures and across climatically defined bioregions" by Jonathan Sandoval-Castillo, Katie Gates, Chris J. Brauer, Steve Smith, Louis Bernatchez, and Luciano B. Beheregaray was published in the journal PNAS.

(Web editor, 13 July 2020)

Until now, the going assumption for ducks (Anatidae) was "large penis, forced copulation, large eggs". A current study led by Hans Winkler of the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna has now been able to refute this hypothesis. The opposite actually seems to be the case: penis length and egg size correlate negatively, the larger the drake´s penis, the smaller the duck eggs. This suggests that the ducks´ evolutionary arms race with forced copulations on one side and anatomical countermeasures on the other cannot continue without restrictions.

The article "The role of female investment in a sexual arms race“ by Bernd Leisler and Hans Winkler was published in the Journal of Avian Biology .

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(Web editor, 27 April 2020)

Mice often vocalize in the ultrasonic range when exposed to a conspecific or their odor, and these vocalizations are often assumed to attract mating partners, enhance courtship and mating success. A recent study by researcher of the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology (Vetmeduni Vienna) now found that mice vocalize differently when their mating partner is genetically unrelated, compared to related partners. This study provides the first evidence that mice use different vocalizations depending on their genetic relatedness, and that their vocalizations can predict their subsequent reproductive success. First author Doris Nicolakis explains the practical relevance of this new finding: “Our results are useful for breeding. The UPS emission can be used to screen breeding pairs during their first contact and to anticipate their later latency for reproduction and reproductive success ... "  

The article "Ultrasonic vocalizations in house mice depend upon genetic relatedness of mating partners and correlate with subsequent reproductive success“ by Doris Nicolakis, Maria Adelaide Marconi, Sarah M. Zala, and Dustin J. Penn was published in Frontiers in Zoology.

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(Web editor, 20 April 2020)