Individual variation in the contact calls of the monomorphic Peach-fronted Conure, Aratinga aurea , and its potential role in communication

They are therefore expected to exhibit acoustic features that make them suitable for communication of identity information. We investigated this in the monomorphic Peach-fronted Conure, a tropical parakeet living in open forest and scrubland habitats.

The species is highly social outside the breeding season where it is assumed to live in a fission–fusion social system. In this study, contact calls from 10 visually isolated male and female Peach-fronted Conures were recorded outside the breeding season. Results from the multivariate analysis of variance and spectrographic cross-correlation with principal coordinates analysis procedure showed that contact calls varied highly between individuals and indicated that caller identity could be encoded in the duration, peak frequency, max frequency and 25%, 50% and 75% frequency energy quartiles of contact calls.