As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Monday 19 June 2017

Genetic differences across species guide vocal learning in juvenile songbirds




Date: June 12, 2017
Source: Uppsala Universitet

Juvenile birds discriminate and selectively learn their own species' songs even when primarily exposed to the songs of other species, but the underlying mechanism has remained unknown. A new study, by researchers at Uppsala University, shows that song discrimination arises due to genetic differences between species, rather than early learning or other mechanisms. The results are published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Songbirds are our primary animal model for studying the behavioral and neural basis of vocal learning and memory formation in general. The tremendous variety in the songs of birds delights ornithologists and fascinates evolutionary biologists as a marker of species diversity. Explaining how species differences in song are maintained is a challenge because birds typically learn their songs by imprinting on songs heard when they were juveniles. What prevents juveniles from imprinting on the songs from a wide-variety of other species in their environment? When exposed to a mixture of different songs from their own and other species, juvenile songbirds discriminate and selectively learn songs typical of their own species, which suggests a remarkable fine-tuning of sound perception during the earliest stages of development. Despite the importance of these findings for our understanding of the vocal learning process, the mechanism underlying early song discrimination has remained unknown.

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