Economy of vocal repertoires: Zipf's laws in animal communication

Abstract: Zipf's Law of Brevity (negative correlation of words' length with the frequency of their use) was found across multiple lexicons and text corpora and often claimed to be one of unifying features of human language. This intriguing linguistic regularity could be explained by the Principle of Least Effort — a compromise between the need for transferring information in a detailed and comprehensive manner and the pressure for minimising the effort (cost) associated with producing signals. If Zipf's principles are indeed fundamental for communication we should be able to find them in animal systems. Animal communication systems are likely to be are constrained by the same fundamental trade-off between minimizing signalling costs while maintaining informational integrity. However, the pressure towards optimization of signalling is not the only force shaping animal vocal repertoires. Factors like, sexual selection, social organization and habitat features can generate evolutionary forces which might push vocal repertoires further away from Zipfian optimization.

Computer scienceMathematics

Audience: researchers in the discipline

Seminar on Algorithmic Aspects of Information Theory

Series comments: This online seminar is a follow up of the Dagstuhl Seminar 22301, www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=22301.