JASs Reports Journal of Anthropological Sciences Vol. 88 (2010), pp. 151-165 Not just a pretty song: an overview of the vocal repertoire of Indri indri Giovanna Maretti1, Viviana Sorrentino1, Andriamasitoly Finomana2, Marco Gamba1 & Cristina Giacoma1 1) Department of Animal and Human Biology, University of Torino, Via Accademia Albertina 13, 10123 Torino, Italy e-mail:
[email protected] 2) Faculté des Sciences, University of Mahajanga, Campus Ambondrona, BP 652, Mahajanga (401), Madagascar Summary - The vocal behaviour of wild indris inhabiting the area near Andasibe was studied by means of all occurrence sampling. We provide a quantitative overview of the vocal repertoire of Indri indri, describing qualitative contextual information and quantitative acoustic analysis for all the utterances we recorded from adult individuals. Other than the song, the repertoire of Indri indri comprises 8 vocal types uttered by the adults. Future studies are necessary to explore whether vocalisations uttered in different contexts have different functions and how these functions relate to acoustic structure. Keywords - Strepsirhine primates, Vocal behaviour, Acoustic structure, Ambient noise. Introduction The indri (Indri indri) is a particularly inter- esting species for the study of vocal communica- To investigate the relationship between vocal tion for at least three reasons. It lives in small and non-vocal behaviour, it is crucial to analyse family groups in lowland to mid-altitude primary vocal signals making up the vocal repertoire of a and secondary rainforest of eastern Madagascar species, to describe vocal types and, where possi- (Garbutt, 1999; Pollock, 1979), spending most ble, provide information regarding the variation of its time in the dense canopy.