Scientists remind their peers: Female birds sing, too

Date:  March 14, 2018

Source:  American Ornithological Society Publications Office

When North American ornithologists hear a bird singing, they're likely to assume it's a male. But in many species, the females sing too -- and a new commentary in The Auk: Ornithological Advancesargues that a better understanding of these unappreciated female songs could lead to advances in many aspects of bird biology.

Authors Karan Odom of Cornell University and Lauryn Benedict of the University of Northern Colorado both discovered the world of female birdsong through their own research. "I started studying California towhees 17 years ago, and I was fascinated by the duet vocalization given by females and males," says Benedict. "That led me to start looking for female song in other North American bird species, and I was surprised to learn that it was much more common than I expected. The reports of female song are buried in odd corners of the literature, but when you put them all together, you start to see some interesting patterns."

Though singing females were likely the norm among the ancestors of today's songbirds, female song today is understudied and is underrepresented in collections of bird sound recordings. This, say Odom and Benedict, may be result of bias toward the world's temperate regions -- though more widespread in temperate species than many ornithologists appreciate, female song is most common among tropical birds. They argue that better documentation of which species female song is present in and more detailed descriptions of female song structure and output could improve our understanding of birds' comparative physiology, neurobiology, behavioral ecology, evolution, and even conservation. Birds of conservation concern are often located and identified by song during surveys, and assumptions that all singing birds are male could mislead wildlife managers about the state of populations.

Read more