Contingency and determinism in the evolution of bird song sound frequency.

ABSTRACT: Sexual signals are archetypes of contingent evolution: hyper-diverse across species, often evolving fast and in unpredictable directions. It is unclear to which extent their evolutionary unpredictability weakens deterministic evolution, or takes place bounded by deterministic patterns of trait evolution. We compared the evolution of sound frequency in sexual signals (advertisement songs) and non-sexual social signals (calls) across > 500 genera of the crown songbird families. Contrary to the acoustic adaptation hypothesis, we found no evidence that forest species used lower sound frequencies in songs or calls. Consistent with contingent evolution in song, we found lower phylogenetic signal for the sound frequency of songs than calls, which suggests faster and less predictable evolution, an

SUBMITTER: Friis JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8172888 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature