The development of sex differences in song in a tropical duetting wren.

ABSTRACT: The study of song development has focused on temperate zone birds in which typically only males sing. In the bay wren, Cantorchilus nigricapillus, both sexes sing, performing precisely timed, female-initiated duets in which birds alternate sex-specific song phrases. We investigated the development of these sex differences by collecting bay wren eggs and nestlings, and hand-raising them in individual acoustic isolation chambers. Each bird was tutored with either monophonic or stereophonic recordings of bay wren duets or heard no song. As adults, each tutored bird sang repertoires of complete duets, singing both male and female phrases. In addition, some birds sang only the male or female part of some duets to which they were exposed. Mono-tutored birds showed no sex-specificity in th

SUBMITTER: Levin RN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9277271 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature