What do birds sing and why?
Nicolas Mathevon examines the evolution of vocal communication through an analysis of songs from more than 3,000 passerine species. The study organizes their acoustic diversity into eight basic motifs and relates motif use to social organization, morphology, mating systems and sound transmission. Tropical forest conditions favor simpler signals such as flat whistles that travel effectively through dense habitat. In temperate regions, dense populations, short breeding seasons and stronger sexual selection favor complex signals such as rapid trills, despite their greater degradation during transmission. The resulting global pattern reflects a changing balance between environmental constraints and selection for complex communication. Online on 30 September 2026, 17:00–18:00 CEST (Europe/Paris; UTC+2), with an optional 15-minute discussion afterward. Open worldwide through Zoom. Use the join information on the organizer's page; its optional registration form subscribes attendees to seminar updates. Organized by LINGUAE's Animal Linguistics Seminar, with Emmanuel Chemla, Lucie Ravaux and Philippe Schlenker. Online via Zoom; public joining instructions on the organizer’s seminar page.
Exploring emotion in the expression of ape gesture
Language appears to be the most complex system of animal communication described to date. However, its precursors were present in the communication of our evolutionary ancestors and are likely shared by our modern ape cousins. All great apes, including humans, employ a rich repertoire of vocalizations, facial expressions, and gestures. Great ape gestural repertoires are particularly elaborate, with ape species employing over 80 different gesture types intentionally: that is towards a recipient with a specific goal in mind. Intentional usage allows us to ask not only what information is encoded in ape gestures, but what do apes mean when they use them. I will discuss recent research on ape gesture, on how we approach the question of decoding meaning, and how with new methods we are starting to integrate long overlooked aspects of ape gesture such as group and individual variation, and expression and emotion into our study of these signals.