Funky gibbon song puts the accent on love

WHEN GIBBONS want to find a mate they don’t start searching the forest, they sing. Males and females communicate through gibbon song, using it to define territories, attract mates and strengthen their pair bonding.

Research shows that so distinct is their song, you can tell where a gibbon comes from by its regional “accent”.

Researchers from the German Primate Centre in Götttingen, Germany, matched up gibbon song and genetic relatedness as a way to identify regional differences in their vocalisations.

They published their findings this week – just in time for St Valentine's Day – in the open access online journal BioMed Central's BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The animals live in dense Asian rainforest in China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The researchers assessed genetic diversity across 19 populations for six species of crested gibbon (genus Nomascus). They collected more than 400 song samples using 53 specific acoustic measures.

They found the more closely related the gibbon group, the more similar is their singing. The tendency to sing a similar song was also apparent in gibbons living in a given region.