scholarly journals Understanding Sex Differences in Form and Function of Bird Song: The Importance of Studying Song Learning Processes

Author(s):  
Katharina Riebel
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 20190059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Riebel ◽  
Karan J. Odom ◽  
Naomi E. Langmore ◽  
Michelle L. Hall

Historically, bird song has been regarded as a sex-specific signalling trait; males sing to attract females and females drive the evolution of signal exaggeration by preferring males with ever more complex songs. This view provides no functional role for female song. Historic geographical research biases generalized pronounced sex differences of phylogenetically derived northern temperate zone songbirds to all songbirds. However, we now know that female song is common and that both sexes probably sang in the ancestor of modern songbirds. This calls for research on adaptive explanations and mechanisms regulating female song, and a reassessment of questions and approaches to identify selection pressures driving song elaboration in both sexes and subsequent loss of female song in some clades. In this short review and perspective we highlight newly emerging questions and propose a research framework to investigate female song and song sex differences across species. We encourage experimental tests of mechanism, ontogeny, and function integrated with comparative evolutionary analyses. Moreover, we discuss the wider implications of female bird song research for our understanding of male and female communication roles.


Author(s):  
Patricia G. Arscott ◽  
Gil Lee ◽  
Victor A. Bloomfield ◽  
D. Fennell Evans

STM is one of the most promising techniques available for visualizing the fine details of biomolecular structure. It has been used to map the surface topography of inorganic materials in atomic dimensions, and thus has the resolving power not only to determine the conformation of small molecules but to distinguish site-specific features within a molecule. That level of detail is of critical importance in understanding the relationship between form and function in biological systems. The size, shape, and accessibility of molecular structures can be determined much more accurately by STM than by electron microscopy since no staining, shadowing or labeling with heavy metals is required, and there is no exposure to damaging radiation by electrons. Crystallography and most other physical techniques do not give information about individual molecules.We have obtained striking images of DNA and RNA, using calf thymus DNA and two synthetic polynucleotides, poly(dG-me5dC)·poly(dG-me5dC) and poly(rA)·poly(rU).


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Fluke ◽  
Russell J. Webster ◽  
Donald A. Saucier

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Wilt ◽  
William Revelle

Author(s):  
Barbara Schönig

Going along with the end of the “golden age” of the welfare state, the fordist paradigm of social housing has been considerably transformed. From the 1980s onwards, a new paradigm of social housing has been shaped in Germany in terms of provision, institutional organization and design. This transformation can be interpreted as a result of the interplay between the transformation of national welfare state and housing policies, the implementation of entrepreneurial urban policies and a shift in architectural and urban development models. Using an integrated approach to understand form and function of social housing, the paper characterizes the new paradigm established and nevertheless interprets it within the continuity of the specific German welfare resp. housing regime, the “German social housing market economy”.


1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Swain

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