Signal transmission

All animal signals degrade as they propagate between sender and receiver. The farther apart the two parties, the greater this degradation will be and the less a signal will stand out from background noise. Senders can do little to reduce degradation once the signals have left the sender. However, they do have a choice of what kind of signal they produce, and evolution has often favoured choices that minimize degradation.

Sound signals transmit efficiently over large distances, around obstacles such as trees and foliage, and in dark environments. Nevertheless, sounds of all frequencies become less intense as they radiate away from a source. Higher frequencies suffer additional attenuation owing to heat losses and scattering of the sounds. Since small animals can produce only high frequencies (short wavelengths), their sound communication is often limited to short distances. Furthermore, ambient sound is often greatest at low and high frequencies, making intermediate frequencies the ones least likely to be obscured by the background.

Propagation of sound is complicated when the sender and receiver are close to a boundary (e.g., the ground for terrestrial animals and the water’s surface for aquatic animals). This is because sound can travel to a receiver by two routes: a direct route along the line connecting sender and receiver, and an indirect route in which the sound bounces off the boundary and up to the receiver. If the two replicates of the sound signal arrive at the receiver out of phase, they will cancel each other out. The closer both parties are to the surface, the more acute the cancellation. Low frequencies are most susceptible to these effects. However, for terrestrial animals, very low frequencies can propagate by a third route, called a ground wave, if the surface is sufficiently porous. Intermediate frequencies, however, are still canceled out even when the ground is porous. As a result, intermediately sized animals that cannot produce low-frequency sounds often climb or fly to locations high above the ground before vocalizing. Elephants, which cannot fly or climb, resort to sufficiently low frequencies that they can be detected several kilometres away. Whales also produce low frequencies and move sufficiently far beneath the ocean surface before vocalizing, which enables their signals to be heard hundreds of kilometres away.

The optimal temporal patterning for sound signals also varies with habitat. Rapid temporal patterns quickly become unrecognizable owing to echoes in heavily forested habitats. In contrast, sounds propagating in open grasslands suffer little from echoes but instead acquire slow artifactual modulations because of air turbulence. Birds, even of the same species, are much more likely to use rapid temporal modulations of their calls, such as trills and buzzes, when they live in grasslands than when they live in forests. Forest birds typically produce long whistlelike notes with slow, if any, modulations.

Light signals also suffer transmission losses. Intervening obstacles such as foliage easily block the straight-line propagation of visual signals, and increasingly distant senders occupy a decreasing part of a receiver’s visual field. Light waves are also subject to filtering and scatter that can distort a signal pattern and decrease its contrast with the background. All of these effects make detection and recognition of a visual signal more difficult at a distance. In addition, reflected light signals require some source of ambient light, and visual communication thus becomes more difficult to achieve at night and in very dark environments. Bioluminescence is, of course, one solution to this problem.

Olfactory signaling differs from sound and light communication in significant ways. Pheromones spread from a source by diffusion and medium turbulence. This process is much slower than the propagation of light or sound signals, and its erratic path can make it difficult for a receiver to locate an odorant source. Whereas sound and light largely retain their temporal patterning as they propagate, temporal patterning of pheromone release is quickly lost because of turbulence. The slow speed, the limited ability to be located, and the loss of temporal pattern constrain the uses of olfactory communication to short-range signals and to recurrent functions, such as territory defense and mate attraction.

The unpredictable effects of turbulence also limit the range over which an olfactory signal can be detected. Receiver moths get around this constraint by sampling wind direction and flying into the wind to trace the chemical source (a process called anemotaxis). Many nocturnal mammals deposit scent marks at multiple locations within their territories. Although no single scent mark is detectable at a distance, the ensemble ensures that any intruder is aware of the owner’s presence in the territory. Some insects and marine species actively seek out sites where air or water currents can convey olfactory signals over long distances.

Signal degradation during propagation is not always a detriment. Many birds use degradation of songs to estimate the distance to competitors. As long as there is sufficient degradation, a territory owner can conclude that the other singers are too distant to be threatening. Many social insects use olfactory signals to mark feeding trails, to give alarms, or to identify colony mates. To avoid confusion and focus attention on a specific location or individual, it is best if these signals have only limited ranges of detection.

Regardless of the modality used, senders communicating with distant receivers face a number of competing influences. Body size, habitat type, time of day, proximity to a surface, and speed with which a receiver must respond all affect the form of the optimal signal. Because species differ in these factors, optimal signals differ between species even when communicating the same information. The constraints imposed by the physics of signal production and transmission account for an important fraction of the diversity seen in animal signals.