2025

Current Biology

Ultrasonic signals support a large-scale communication landscape in wild mice

Perrier, L., Lego, L., Cladière, T., Blanchard, M., Makuya, L., Berns, W., Pradeau, A., Schradin, C., Greenfield, M.D., Mathevon, N. & Levréro, F.

Wild African striped mice use short-range ultrasonic signals for large-scale communication. By vocalizing at key territorial locations, they extend the functional reach of these private signals, broadcasting group identity to differentiate between groupmates, neighbors, and strangers, mediating complex territorial dynamics.

2025

Science Advances

Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion

Girard-Buttoz, C., Neumann, C., Bortolato, T., Zaccarella, E., Friederici, A. D., Wittig, R. M., & Crockford, C.

Chimpanzee’s vocal communication shows a dual system with two meaning construction channels, such that when single calls are combined into bigrams they can either generate new meaning by creating non-compositional combinations or they can retain or modify their meaning, creating compositional combinations.

2025

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Puppy whines mediate maternal behavior in domestic dogs

Massenet, M., Philippe, R., Pisanski, K., Arnaud, V., Barluet de Beauchesne, L., Reynaud, K., Mathevon, N. & Reby, D.

Research using synthetic whines shows mother dogs recognize offspring and assess their condition via vocalizations. Mothers responded most to their litter's specific pitch, especially whines simulating weaker puppies. This proves vocal communication supports kin discrimination and condition assessment in mammals. These findings aid in developing vocal-based welfare monitoring tools to improve breeding practices and animal care.

2023

Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Crocodile perception of distress in hominid baby cries

Thévenet, J., Papet, L., Coureaud, G., Boyer, N., Levréro, F., Grimault, N., & Mathevon, N.

Crocodiles are sensitive to the degree of distress encoded in the vocalizations of phylogenetically very distant vertebrates. A comparison of these results with those obtained with human subjects confronted with the same stimuli indicates that crocodiles and humans use different acoustic criteria to assess the distress encoded in infant cries. The acoustic features driving crocodile reaction are likely to be more reliable markers of distress than those used by humans.

2023

Princeton University Press.

The Voices of Nature. How and Why Animals Communicate

Mathevon, N.

An epic journey into the world of bioacoustics. For amateurs and professionals alike. Excerpt from the book can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/3pehs4hj. This book won the prestigious top prize RR Hawkins Award together with the PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences from the Association of American Publishers. It was also awarded Library Journal’s Best Science & Technology Book of the Year.

2020

Nature Communications

Evolution of communication signals and information during species radiation

Garcia, M., Theunissen, F., Sèbe, F., Clavel, J., Ravignani, A., Marin-Cudraz, T., Fuchs, J. & Mathevon, N.

We show that in woodpecker drumming the amount of species identity information encoded remained stable during woodpeckers’ radiation. Acoustic analyses and evolutionary reconstructions show interchange among six main drumming types despite strong phylogenetic contingencies. We only find character displacement in the rare cases where sympatric species are also closely related. Our results illustrate how historical contingencies and ecological interactions can promote conservatism in signals without impairing information transfer.