Typical versions of learned swamp sparrow song types are more effective signals than are less typical versions

R. F. Lachlan, R. C. Anderson, S. Peters, W. A. Searcy, S. Nowicki

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The learned songs of songbirds often cluster into population-wide types. Here, we test the hypothesis that male and female receivers respond differently to songs dependingon howtypical of those types theyare.We usedcomputational methods to cluster a large sample of swamp sparrow(Melospiza georgiana) songs into types and to estimate the degree to which individual song exemplars are typical of these types.We then played exemplars to male and female receivers. Territorial males responded more aggressively and captive females performed more sexual displays in response to songs that are highly typical than to songs that are less typical. Previous studies have demonstrated that songbirds distinguish song types that are typical for their species, or for their population, from those that are not. Our results show that swamp sparrows also discriminate typical from less typical exemplars within learned song-type categories. In addition, our results suggest thatmore typical versions of song types function better, at least in male-female communication. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that syllable type typicality serves as a proxy for the assessment of song learning accuracy.
Original languageEnglish
Article number20140252
Pages (from-to)1-7
Number of pages7
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological sciences
Volume281
Issue number1785
Early online date22 Jun 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jun 2014

Keywords

  • Bird song
  • Categories
  • Communication
  • Cultural transmission

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