Interval timing and animal communication.

Abstract

Animals time durations between arbitrary events to make predictions about their environment. This ability, known as interval timing, has been studied in the context of reward expectancy in the laboratory and foraging in the wild. However, timing is also used in other contexts, such as in animal communication. Communication signals have characteristic timing, which affects the sender's likelihood of attracting mates, fending off rivals and deterring eavesdroppers. The literature on timing in reward expectancy and communication is extensive, but there is little crossover between the two fields. Here, we review this literature while highlighting the neural mechanisms that may be shared between the two modes of timing. We focus our comparison on learned communication signals, such as birdsong, given that learning is also a crucial component of reward expectancy. However, we also argue that even the study of innate communication signals could shed light on the nature of the neural oscillators that animals use to keep track of time. We also highlight potential differences between interval and communication timing. We argue that timing precision might be particularly important in communication, as precision can be an honest indicator of quality. However, increased precision might occur at a cost to the range of intervals that can be produced in a signal. Thus, communication signals provide an opportunity to study the physiological constraints that limit the precision and range at which neurons can sustain rhythms to either produce rhythmic behavior or keep track of time.