Sound Production in Animals - Key Terms

Vocabulary flashcards covering the major sound production mechanisms and examples described in the lecture notes.

Tendon plucking

A sound production method that uses tension on a tendon attached to a bone and plucks it to create a thud-like sound; croaking gouramis use two tendons to produce plucking sounds, which can double the potential frequency.

Croaking gourami

A fish that uses tendon plucking to generate sounds, possessing two tendons capable of producing plucking noises.

Tremulation

A sound production or signaling method where the whole body is rocked to transmit vibrations into a solid object; common at very low frequencies and used for dominance signaling in some frogs and insects.

Pulsation

Sound produced by contracting and expanding a closed flexible object within a fluid, such as a swim bladder contracting and expanding to create sound waves.

Swim bladder

An air-filled gas bladder in fish that helps with buoyancy and can be set into pulsation by sonic muscles to produce sound.

Sonic muscles

Muscles that rapidly contract around or near the swim bladder to produce pulsation sounds; among the fastest vertebrate muscles (e.g., in toadfish and midshipman).

Toadfish

A marine fish known for its sonic muscles that can contract very rapidly to produce sound.

Midshipman

A marine fish with rapid sonic muscle contractions around the swim bladder, producing sounds for communication.

Fanning

A sound production method where a flat solid object (often wings) is moved cyclically through air, producing near-field sounds and often little far-field sound.

Elephant mosquito

An insect whose wingbeat signaling shows that opposite-sex individuals converge on the same frequency for reproduction; same-sex pairs diverge, signaling incompatibility.

Wingbeat frequency convergence/divergence

Insects like mosquitoes and fruit flies adjust their wingbeat frequencies to signal reproductive compatibility (convergence) or incompatibility (divergence) with nearby individuals.

Streaming

Sound produced by moving through air with rapid feather or surface deformations, such as a bird flaring its primary feathers to create a race-car-like sound during a dive.

Nighthawk

A bird that uses streaming to produce a distinctive sound during high-speed flight, created by flaring and vibrating its primary feathers.

Primary feathers

The main wing feathers involved in streaming sound production when vibrated rapidly during fast flight.

Fluid compression

A mechanism of sound production through rapid changes in pressure within a fluid, leading to phenomena like cavitation bubbles or sonic booms.

Cavitation bubble

A bubble formed by rapid pressure changes in a fluid (e.g., from a crab claw snap) that collapses and creates a loud sound.

Snapping shrimp

A marine crustacean that produces a loud click by snapping its claw, creating a cavitation bubble whose collapse generates the sound.

Mannequin bird

A South American bird species whose males produce popping sounds by rapid wing flicks, a form of fluid-compression sound similar to a whip crack.

Leaf resonance and monarch larvae tremulation

Monarch butterfly larvae tremulate in response to a vibration that matches the resonant frequency of the leaves they sit on, perceiving it as another tremulation signal.