近日，科学家发现长臂猿用来相互交流的歌声中存在着地方口音。
这种亚属长臂猿发现于越南、老挝、柬埔寨和中国南部，这种长臂猿以其种群特异的歌声来沟通交流、确定领地以及吸引配偶。来自哥廷根德国灵长类动物研究中心的研究人员已经发现这些歌声的结构、基因都与它们栖息的地区有着密切的关系，从而可以解答了一些有关灵长类物种进化和迁徙的问题。
进化论生物学家范玉霆（Van Ngoc Thinh）在一次新闻发布会上解释说：“每一只长臂猿都有它自己特异的歌声，但是，和人类一样，在同一地区的长臂猿的歌声有地区相似性。”
这项发表在英国医学委员会《BMC进化生物学》（BMC Evolutionary Biology）期刊上的研究集中研究了6种冠长臂猿的歌声结构，特别注意了其中最接近的4种。研究记录了来自24个不同地区、92支猿群的400多只雄性和雌性长臂猿的歌声。
研究称，长臂猿的歌声结构表现出一个明显的适应性改变，增强了远距离传播能力，这意味着它们已经适应了在亚洲森林中的生活环境。用慢速调制的单频带播放这些歌声，产生的声音听起来更像热带雨林的鸟叫声。
虽然在这些歌声结构中有很多相似之处，但就个体嗓音而言，仍会存在许多差异。通过利用物种基因学对53种不同的声音进行比对分析，科学家发现其中有4种歌声最为相似，而发出这4种歌声的长臂猿物种有着最相近的DNA，相互关系也最为亲近。同时科学家还发现来自最南边地区的长臂猿比那些在较北边越南和中国的长臂猿更相近，这就表明长臂猿的发源地在较为北边的地区，普遍向南迁徙。
通过这些研究，科学家推断出其它灵长类的歌声和叫声可能也会有地区差异，因此，这些研究成果可以更广泛的用于识别物种关系以及确定它们的迁徙经历。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处：
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011, 11:36 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-36
Concordance between vocal and genetic diversity in crested gibbons
Van Ngoc Thinh , Chris Hallam , Christian Roos and Kurt Hammerschmidt
Background
Gibbons or small apes are, next to great apes, our closest living relatives, and form the most diverse group of contemporary hominoids. A characteristic trait of gibbons is their species-specific song structure, which, however, exhibits a certain amount of inter- and intra-individual variation. Although differences in gibbon song structure are routinely applied as taxonomic tool to identify subspecies and species, it remains unclear to which degree acoustic and phylogenetic differences are correlated. To trace this issue, we comparatively analyse song recordings and mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequence data from 22 gibbon populations representing six of the seven crested gibbon species (genus Nomascus). In addition, we address whether song similarity and geographic distribution can support a recent hypothesis about the biogeographic history of crested gibbons.
Results
The acoustic analysis of 92 gibbon duets confirms the hypothesised concordance between song structure and phylogeny. Based on features of male and female songs, we can not only distinguish between N. nasutus, N. concolor and the four southern species (N. leucogenys, N. siki, N. annamensis, N. gabriellae), but also between the latter by applying more detailed analysis. In addition to the significant correlation between song structure and genetic similarity, we find a similar high correlation between song similarity and geographic distance.
Conclusions
The results show that the structure of crested gibbon songs is not only a reliable tool to verify phylogenetic relatedness, but also to unravel geographic origins. As vocal production in other nonhuman primate species appears to be evolutionarily based, it is likely that loud calls produced by other species can serve as characters to elucidate phylogenetic relationships.
