Acoustic codes carry messages robustly enough to survive partial signal loss

Evidence

In the analysis of the complexity of the acoustic communication codes, the acoustic codes specifically represent an interesting perspective of analysis. Codes in biology are numerous and well documented. Every acoustic message is the result of a sequence of elementary parts whose syntax represents a message. Acoustic codes operate at intraspecific level but also at interspecific level, improving the efficiency of communicative behavior. Code sequence may have a so robust structure that despite the loss of a relevant part of the codes the message is not degraded. An example of this aspect is represented by the acoustic structure of blackcap song, where experimentally it has been verified that only when the frequency modulation was suppressed or the number of syllables strongly reduced was there a cessation of male reply to the playback. — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology, 804

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines acoustic codes as syntactic sequences whose redundancy preserves messages under degradation.
• XREF: connects to: Apparent complexity masks hidden relational code rules — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 685; Forest-dwelling birds can decode degraded songs down to a minimal core code — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 650; Environmental sounds remain identifiable even when severely spectrally filtered — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 995