Learning to cope with degraded sounds: female zebra finches can improve their expertise in discriminating between male voices at long distances.

ABSTRACT: Reliable transmission of acoustic information about individual identity is of critical importance for pair bond maintenance in numerous monogamous songbirds. However, information transfer can be impaired by environmental constraints such as external noise or propagation-induced degradation. Birds have been shown to use several adaptive strategies to deal with difficult signal transmission contexts. Specifically, a number of studies have suggested that vocal plasticity at the emitter's level allows birds to counteract the deleterious effects of sound degradation. Although the communication process involves both the emitter and the receiver, perceptual plasticity at the receiver's level has received little attention. Here, we explored the reliability of individual recognition by female zebra

SUBMITTER: Mouterde SC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4148187 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature