{"doi":"10.7554/elife.89892","title":"Unsupervised discovery of family specific vocal usage in the Mongolian gerbil","abstract":"<jats:p>In nature, animal vocalizations can provide crucial information about identity, including kinship and hierarchy. However, lab-based vocal behavior is typically studied during brief interactions between animals with no prior social relationship, and under environmental conditions with limited ethological relevance. Here, we address this gap by establishing long-term acoustic recordings from Mongolian gerbil families, a core social group that uses an array of sonic and ultrasonic vocalizations. Three separate gerbil families were transferred to an enlarged environment and continuous 20-day audio recordings were obtained. Using a variational autoencoder (VAE) to quantify 583,237 vocalizations, we show that gerbils exhibit a more elaborate vocal repertoire than has been previously reported and that vocal repertoire usage differs significantly by family. By performing gaussian mixture model clustering on the VAE latent space, we show that families preferentially use characteristic sets of vocal clusters and that these usage preferences remain stable over weeks. Furthermore, gerbils displayed family-specific transitions between vocal clusters. Since gerbils live naturally as extended families in complex underground burrows that are adjacent to other families, these results suggest the presence of a vocal dialect which could be exploited by animals to represent kinship. These findings position the Mongolian gerbil as a compelling animal model to study the neural basis of vocal communication and demonstrates the potential for using unsupervised machine learning with uninterrupted acoustic recordings to gain insights into naturalistic animal behavior.</jats:p>","journal":"eLife","year":2024,"id":32653,"datarank":0.2571401468234756,"base_score":1.6094379124341003,"endowment":1.6094379124341003,"self_citation_contribution":0.24141568686511508,"citation_network_contribution":0.015724459958360488,"self_endowment_contribution":0.24141568686511508,"citer_contribution":0.015724459958360488,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":2,"citers_with_citation_signal":2,"citers_with_endowment":2,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":172417,"name":"Aman Choudhri","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172418,"name":"Catalin Mitelut","orcid":"0000-0003-0471-9816","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172419,"name":"Aramis Tanelus","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172420,"name":"Athena Capo-Battaglia","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172421,"name":"Alex H Williams","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172422,"name":"David M Schneider","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172423,"name":"Dan H Sanes","orcid":"0000-0002-3783-6165","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":172416,"name":"Ralph E Peterson","orcid":"0000-0002-2692-5955","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"base_score":1.6094379124341003,"endowment":1.6094379124341003,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"39680425","pmcid":"PMC11649239","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W4386326408","authors":[],"funders":[{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"T90DA059110","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"5T32MH096331-10","title":"Training Program in Neuroscience"},{"funder_name":"National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","grant_id":"R01DC020279","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","grant_id":"R01DC018802","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","grant_id":"R34DA059513","title":null},{"funder_name":"Burroughs Wellcome Fund","grant_id":"Career Award at the Scientific Interface","title":null},{"funder_name":"New York Stem Cell Foundation","grant_id":"Robertson Neuroscience Investigator","title":null},{"funder_name":"NIMH NIH HHS","grant_id":"T32 MH096331","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"3R01DC018802-04S1","title":"Auditory cortical processing of self-generated sounds"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"1R01DC020279-01","title":"Social learning enhances auditory cortex sensitivity and task acquisition"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"5T90DA059110-02","title":"Training program in computational approaches to brain and behavior"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"5R34DA059513-02","title":"Computational attribution and fusion of vocalizations, social behavior, and neural recordings in a naturalistic environment"},{"funder_name":"Searle Scholars Program","grant_id":"","title":null},{"funder_name":"Alfred P. Sloan Foundation","grant_id":"","title":null},{"funder_name":"McKnight Foundation","grant_id":"","title":null}],"total_grants":15,"fwci":1.0122,"citation_percentile":0.75214106,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[{"year":2024,"count":1},{"year":2025,"count":3}],"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://github.com/elifesciences/enhanced-preprints-data/raw/master/data/89892/v1/89892-v1.pdf","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://github.com/elifesciences/enhanced-preprints-data/raw/master/data/89892/v1/89892-v1.pdf","host_type":"GREEN"},{"url":"https://github.com/elifesciences/enhanced-preprints-data/raw/master/data/89892/v1/89892-v1.pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/89892/elife-89892-v2.pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/89892/elife-89892-v2.xml","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://elifesciences.org/articles/89892","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.89892","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39680425","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/11649239","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://doaj.org/article/0fd39456070c44c482a3d1d7fc343412","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11649239","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11649239?pdf=render","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.11.532197","host_type":""},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.89892.1","host_type":""},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.89892.3","host_type":""},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.89892.2","host_type":""},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39282260","host_type":""},{"url":"http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.89892","host_type":""},{"url":"http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.11.532197","host_type":""}],"fields_of_study":["Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior","Language and cultural evolution","Infant Health and Development","Medicine","Biology","Environmental Science","0301 basic medicine","0303 health sciences","03 medical and health sciences","Animals","Gerbillinae","Vocalization, Animal","Male","Female","Social Behavior","Acoustics"],"mesh_terms":["Acoustics","Animals","Female","Gerbillinae","Male","Social Behavior","Vocalization, Animal"],"keywords":["Gerbil","Repertoire","Kinship","Vocal communication","Animal communication","Communication","Speech recognition","Psychology","Biology","Computer science","Acoustics","Ecology","Bioacoustics","Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus)","Social behavior","Neuroscience","Mongolian gerbil","Ethology","Auditory Neuroscience","Male","QH301-705.5","Science","Q","R","Article","Medicine","Animals","Female","Biology (General)","Vocalization, Animal","Gerbillinae"],"sdg_mappings":[],"linked_datasets":[],"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"database_accessions":[],"source":"live","citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-06-09T13:54:50.409425Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}