A Previously Undescribed Method of Song Matching in a Species with a Single Song “Type”, the Kentucky Warbler (Oporornis formosus)

Ethology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 334-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
EUGENE S. MORTON ◽  
KIMBERLEY YOUNG
Keyword(s):  
Song Type ◽  
Oporornis Formosus

scholarly journals The Duet Code of the Female Black-Bellied Wren

The Condor ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 326-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Logue
Keyword(s):  
Animal Communication ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Song Type ◽  
Free Living ◽  
Female Response ◽  
Male Song ◽  
Vocal Responses ◽  
Vocal Signals ◽  
Behavioral Mechanisms ◽  
Song Types

Abstract In many duet-singing songbirds, paired birds combine their song types nonrandomly to form duet songs. Several different behavioral mechanisms could generate nonrandom song type associations in duets. I tested female Black-bellied Wrens (Thryothorus fasciatoventris) for one such mechanism: adherence to a set of rules linking female response songs to male stimulus songs. I call this set of rules a “duet code.” Duets of free-living Black-bellied Wrens were recorded in 2001 and 2002. In 2003 I returned to the same territories and played the male song types from the recorded duets. Females answered male song stimuli as if duetting with the playback speaker. Although the known repertoires of females averaged 8.4 song types, each female sang only a single song type in response to each male song type. Random answering could not account for this pattern, supporting the hypothesis that females abide by duet codes. Females that were still paired with their mates from 2001–2002 answered 100% of their mate's songs with the same song types they had used previously, demonstrating that codes are stable over time. In contrast, females that were new to a territory answered an average of only 18% of their mate's song types with the same song type as the previous female, indicating that duet codes are individually distinctive. Duet participation by female Black-bellied Wrens represents a special kind of animal communication, in which discrete vocal signals consistently elicit discrete vocal responses according to an individually distinctive set of rules.

Assessing the similarity of song-type transitions among birds: evidence for interspecies variation

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 ◽  
pp. 161-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Hedley ◽  
David M. Logue ◽  
Lauryn Benedict ◽  
Daniel J. Mennill
Keyword(s):  
Song Type ◽  
Interspecies Variation

scholarly journals Deceptive vocal duets and multimodal display in a songbird

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1864) ◽  
pp. 20171774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Ręk ◽  
Robert D. Magrath
Keyword(s):  
Group Living ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Song Type ◽  
Visual Displays ◽  
Visual Component ◽  
Song Types ◽  
Multimodal Signalling ◽  
Australian Magpie ◽  
Vocal Duets

Many group-living animals cooperatively signal to defend resources, but what stops deceptive signalling to competitors about coalition strength? Cooperative-signalling species include mated pairs of birds that sing duets to defend their territory. Individuals of these species sometimes sing ‘pseudo-duets’ by mimicking their partner's contribution, but it is unknown if these songs are deceptive, or why duets are normally reliable. We studied pseudo-duets in Australian magpie-larks, Grallina cyanoleuca , and tested whether multimodal signalling constrains deception. Magpie-larks give antiphonal duets coordinated with a visual display, with each sex typically choosing a different song type within the duet. Individuals produced pseudo-duets almost exclusively during nesting when partners were apart, but the two song types were used in sequence rather than antiphonally. Strikingly, birds hid and gave no visual displays, implying deceptive suppression of information. Acoustic playbacks showed that pseudo-duets provoked the same response from residents as true duets, regardless of whether they were sequential or antiphonal, and stronger response than that to true duets consisting of a single song type. By contrast, experiments with robot models showed that songs accompanied by movements of two birds prompted stronger responses than songs accompanied by movements of one bird, irrespective of the number of song types or singers. We conclude that magpie-larks used deceptive pseudo-duets when partners were apart, and suppressed the visual display to maintain the subterfuge. We suggest that the visual component of many species' duets provides the most reliable information about the number of signallers and may have evolved to maintain honesty in duet communication.

Macrogeographic variation in the song of the Mourning Warbler (Oporornis philadelphia)

2011 ◽  
Vol 89 (11) ◽  
pp. 1027-1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Pitocchelli
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Population Variation ◽  
Song Type ◽  
Clinal Variation ◽  
Breeding Range ◽  
Geographic Structure ◽  
Song Divergence ◽  
Regional Dialect ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
Northern Alberta

Studies of macrogeographic variation in birdsong involve populations incapable of interbreeding because of physical barriers or separation by large distances. Different patterns have emerged from these studies such as (i) little or no variation exists among individuals or populations from the breeding range, (ii) individual variation is greater than among population variation resulting in no geographic structure, (iii) clinal variation, and (iv) macrogeographic variation where all individuals from several populations on the breeding range share a common song type forming a regional dialect or regiolect. I studied macrogeographic variation in song of the Mourning Warbler ( Oporornis philadelphia (A. Wilson, 1810)). The observed pattern was similar to the fourth category of geographic variation with regiolects. A Western regiolect extended from northern Alberta to western Ontario. An Eastern regiolect stretched eastward from western Ontario and Wisconsin to the Gaspé Peninsula and New England, then southward through the Appalachians to West Virginia. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland each had unique regiolects. Finally, I compared these results to other species with regiolects and assessed the ability of some deterministic hypotheses to explain song divergence (e.g., role of morphology, physical barriers, island isolation).

Temporal patterning of within-song type and between-song type variation in song repertoires

1994 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 329-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Nowicki ◽  
Jeffrey Podos ◽  
Frances Vald�s
Keyword(s):  
Song Type ◽  
Temporal Patterning ◽  
Song Repertoires

A comparison between two ways to measure minimum frequency and an experimental test of vocal plasticity in red-winged blackbirds in response to noise

Behaviour ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 153 (12) ◽  
pp. 1445-1472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro A. Ríos-Chelén ◽  
Gavin C. Lee ◽  
Gail L. Patricelli
Keyword(s):  
Energy Distribution ◽  
Experimental Test ◽  
Small Sample Size ◽  
Power Spectra ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Song Type ◽  
Threshold Method ◽  
Vocal Plasticity ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Minimum Frequency

We examined whether red-winged blackbirds modulate their vocalizations in response to experimental highway noise, alternating between ambient-control and noise-playback periods. Our measures of song duration were shorter, and with a lower value of freq5% (a measure of energy distribution), during noise-playback; however, we interpret these results as noise-induced artefacts. This apparent lack of vocal plasticity should be taken cautiously because we had a small sample size and most birds produced only one song type: song type-related vocal plasticity was unlikely to be found. We found no evidence of a shift in minimum frequency with noise when this was measured with a threshold method on power spectra, but it seemed to increase when measured by eye from spectrograms. Our results suggest that the by-eye practice can lead to bias, which is problematic as several previous studies have used this procedure. Use of the threshold method, over the by-eye practice, is encouraged.

Song-type matching between neighbouring song sparrows

2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Beecher ◽  
S.Elizabeth Campbell ◽  
John M. Burt ◽  
Christopher E. Hill ◽  
J.Cully Nordby
Keyword(s):  
Song Type ◽  
Song Sparrows
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