Adult male Australian sea lion barking calls reveal clear geographical variations.

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Ahonen, Heidi | Stow, Adam J. | Harcourt, Robert G. | Charrier, Isabelle

Edité par CCSD ; Elsevier -

International audience. Highlights• We assessed the extent of geographical variation in male Australian sea lion calls.• We found significant variation in male vocalization across breeding colonies.• The acoustic structure does not fully reflect either genetic or geographical patterns.• Concordance between acoustic and genetic structures is found at large scale only.• Environmental or morphological factors may refine differences in vocal characteristics.Vocalizing by males plays an important role in the reproductive activities of many species. Geographical variation in the characteristics of male vocalization is well studied in birds, but largely unexplored in mammals. This study quantified the extent of geographical variation in male Australian sea lion, Neophoca cinerea, barking calls and examined what drives vocal differences in this species. We recorded male barking calls from seven breeding colonies separated by ca. 5–2700 km enabling us to investigate acoustic differences on both micro- and macrogeographical scales. Our results revealed significant nonuniform geographical variation across colonies. Neither genetic nor geographical distances between colonies fully explained the observed acoustic variation. We suggest that environmental or morphological factors are likely to further contribute to differences in vocal characteristics.

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