Vocal recognition of partners by female prairie voles

Recognizing conspecifics is vital for differentiating mates, offspring, and social threats. Individual recognition is often reliant upon chemical or visual cues but can also be facilitated by vocal signatures in some species. In common laboratory rodents, playback studies have uncovered communicative functions of vocalizations, but scant behavioral evidence exists for individual vocal recognition. Here, we find that the socially monogamous prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) emits behavior-dependent vocalizations that can communicate individual identity. Vocalizations of individual males change after bonding with a female; however, acoustic variation across individuals is greater than within-individual variation. Critically, females behaviorally discriminate their partner's vocalizations from a stranger's, even if emitted to another stimulus female. These results establish the acoustic and behavioral foundation for individual vocal recognition in prairie voles, where neurobiological tools enable future studies revealing its causal neural mechanisms.