
Animal Vocal Communication
A New Approach
Cambridge University Press
Published on 2. November 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
300 pages
978-0-521-03129-5 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
This book will be a landmark text for all those interested in animal communication. Animal Vocal Communication explicitly avoids human-centred concepts and approaches and links communication to fundamental biological processes instead. It offers a conceptual framework - assessment/management - that allows us to integrate detailed studies of communication with an understanding of evolutionary perspectives. Self-interested assessment is placed on par with the signal production (management) side of communication, and communication is viewed as reflecting regulatory processes. Signals are used to manage the behaviour of others by exploiting their active assessment. The authors contend that it is this interplay between management and assessment that results in the functioning and evolution of animal communication; it is what communicative behaviour accomplishes that is important, not what information is conveyed.
Reviews / Votes
'Packed full of cogent example, Donald Owings and Eugene Morton's Animal Vocal Communication is erudite, wide ranging and fascinating.' New Scientist '... interesting reading ... an intellectual challenge ... a most welcome contribution for readers with a good knowledge of the literature on animal vocal communication.' Torben Dabelsteen, IBIS 'This is the shortest, most clearly written and most interesting of several major books on animal communication that were published in the past 3 years ... This is a stimulating and provocative book ... I highly recommend it to all primatologists interested in social behaviour and communication.' International Journal of PrimatologyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
5 Tables, unspecified; 4 Halftones, unspecified; 50 Line drawings, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-03129-5 (9780521031295)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions

Book
04/2017
2nd Edition
Cambridge University Press
€121.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Eugene Morton attended Denison University (BS), the University of the Pacific, Cornell University (MS) and completed his PhD at Yale University, with pre- and postdoctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Dr Morton was a Professor at the University of Maryland and a Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution until his retirement in 2005. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at York University in Toronto and Director of the Hemlock Hill Field Station near Cambridge Springs, PA, where students from the University of Maryland, Princeton University, York University and Allegheny College have pursued research for degrees. Dr Morton specializes in migratory bird behavioral ecology, mating systems in birds and saturniid moths, animal communication and avian/plant co-evolution. He has written or edited several books, including Animal Talk (1991) and The Smithsonian Book of Birds (1990) (both with Jake Page), Migrant Birds in the Neotropics (1982) and The Behavioral Ecology of Tropical Birds (2001, with Bridget Stutchbury).
Author
University of California, Davis
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Content
Preface; Acknowledgements; Prologue; 1. Overview of ideas; 2. The roles of assessment and management in communication; 3. Form and function in vocal communication; 4. Mechanisms and proximate processes of vocal communication; 5. Assessment/management - a viable replacement for the information concept; References; Index.