A COMPARISON OF 4 VOCALIZATIONS OF THE GENUS TRAGOPAN (AVES, PHASIANIDAE)

Four calls of the genus Tragopan were described and acoustically analy sed. Alarm and wing whir calls were very similar in sound and structur e in all five species. By contrast, a comparison of 11 physical parame ters of advertisement and clicking calls indicated that species separa ted into three groups: western and Cabot's each separated into their o wn group, whereas Blyth's, Temminck's and satyr formed another group. It was hypothesized that the tragopan prototype population had their o rigin in the eastern Himalayas. Thus, the centrally distributed specie s of tragopans (satyr, Blyth's and Temminck's) retained characteristic s of the ancestral population, whereas the peripheral species (western and Cabot's) underwent vocal modifications. Courtship vocalizations, which are under sexual selection pressure, probably serve as species-i solating mechanisms in sympatric species.