The effect of social environment on bird song: listener-specific expression of a sexual signal.

ABSTRACT: Animal signals should consistently differ among individuals to convey distinguishable information about the signalers. However, behavioral display signals, such as bird song are also loaded with considerable within-individual variance with mostly unknown function. We hypothesized that the immediate social environment may play a role in mediating such variance component, and investigated in the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis) if the identity and quality of listeners could affect song production in signalers. After presenting territorial males with either a female or male social stimulus, we found in the subsequent song recordings that the among-stimulus effects corresponded to non-zero variance components in several acoustic traits indicating that singing males are able to

SUBMITTER: Jablonszky M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8653761 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature