Linguistic laws in biology

S Semple, R Ferrer-i-Cancho, ML Gustison - Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2022 - cell.com
Linguistic laws, the common statistical patterns of human language, have been investigated
by quantitative linguists for nearly a century. Recently, biologists from a range of disciplines …

[HTML][HTML] Zipf's law of abbreviation holds for individual characters across a broad range of writing systems

A Koshevoy, H Miton, O Morin - Cognition, 2023 - Elsevier
Abstract Zipf's Law of Abbreviation–the idea that more frequent symbols in a code are
simpler than less frequent ones–has been shown to hold at the level of words in many …

Unsupervised acoustic classification of individual gibbon females and the implications for passive acoustic monitoring

DJ Clink, H Klinck - Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2021 - Wiley Online Library
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has the potential to greatly improve our ability to monitor
cryptic yet vocal animals. Advances in automated signal detection have increased the scope …

Optimal coding and the origins of Zipfian laws

R Ferrer-i-Cancho, C Bentz… - Journal of Quantitative …, 2022 - Taylor & Francis
The problem of compression in standard information theory consists of assigning codes as
short as possible to numbers. Here we consider the problem of optimal coding–under an …

Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song

M Youngblood - Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2024 - royalsocietypublishing.org
Communication needs to be complex enough to be functional while minimizing learning and
production costs. Recent work suggests that the vocalizations and gestures of some …

A workflow for the automated detection and classification of female gibbon calls from long-term acoustic recordings

DJ Clink, I Kier, AH Ahmad, H Klinck - Frontiers in Ecology and …, 2023 - frontiersin.org
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) allows for the study of vocal animals on temporal and
spatial scales difficult to achieve using only human observers. Recent improvements in …

Linguistic laws of brevity: conformity in Indri indri

D Valente, C De Gregorio, L Favaro, O Friard… - Animal cognition, 2021 - Springer
Vocal and gestural sequences of several primates have been found to conform to two
general principles of information compression: the compensation between the duration of a …

Automated detection and detection range of primate duets: a case study of the red titi monkey (Plecturocebus discolor) using passive acoustic monitoring

SM van Kuijk, S O'Brien, DJ Clink, JG Blake… - Frontiers in Ecology …, 2023 - frontiersin.org
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM)–an approach that uses autonomous acoustic recording
units (ARUs)–can provide insights into the behavior of cryptic or endangered species that …

Evidence for Vocal Flexibility in Wild Siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) Ululating Scream Phrases

J D'Agostino, S Spehar, A Abdullah… - International Journal of …, 2023 - Springer
Nonhuman primate vocalizations have been traditionally described as stereotyped and most
likely genetically determined. However, there is increasing evidence of flexibility with a wide …

An exploration of Menzerath's law in wild mountain gorilla vocal sequences

SK Watson, R Heesen, D Hedwig… - Biology …, 2020 - royalsocietypublishing.org
Menzerath's law, traditionally framed as a negative relationship between the size of a
structure and its constituent parts (eg sentences with more clauses have shorter clauses), is …