Fairy-wrens change breeding habits to cope with climate change

OCTOBER 11, 2019

by The Australian National University

Warmer temperatures linked to climate change are having a big impact on the breeding habits of one of Australia's most recognisable bird species, according to researchers at The Australian National University (ANU).

The study looked at the breeding season of superb fairy-wrens living in the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra.

The research was led by Dr. Lei Lv, who is visiting ANU from Sun Yat-sen University in China.

Dr. Lv says warmer temperatures in early spring mean the birds will start breeding earlier than they normally would. If temperatures rise too high in mid-summer, they will also finish breeding earlier.

"Fairy-wrens have a very long breeding season which usually runs from around September through to February," Dr. Lv said.

"The timing varies a lot among individuals and from year-to-year. We wanted to see if this variation was connected to changes in climate.

"It turns out if the minimum night-time temperatures are milder, the birds will start breeding earlier.

Continued

Tweets going viral: birds can 'learn second language' from peers

The Australian fairy wren can master the meaning of a few key ‘words’ by listening to other species

Associated Press

Fri 3 Aug 2018 03.19 BSTLast modified on Tue 7 Aug 2018 04.53 BST

Birds can learn a second language by listening to the tweets and chirps of other birds, helping them to find out when a predator is approaching, scientists have found.

Wild animals are known to listen to each other for clues about lurking predators, effectively eavesdropping on other species’ chatter. Birds, for example, can learn to flee when neighbours cluck the equivalent of “hawk!” — or, more precisely, emit a distress call.

The fairy wren, a small Australian songbird, is not born knowing the “languages” of other birds. But it can master the meaning of a few key “words”, as scientists explained in a paper published in the journal Current Biology.

 “We knew before that some animals can translate the meanings of other species’ ‘foreign languages,’ but we did not know how that ‘language learning’ came about,” said Andrew Radford, a biologist at the University of Bristol and co-author of the study.

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Low-Pitched Song Indicates Fairy-Wren Size

Feb. 20, 2013 — A male fairy-wren's low pitch song indicates body size, a new international study has shown. The study led by University of Melbourne researcher Dr Michelle Hall, is the first to show that the larger the male fairy wren, the lower the pitch of his song.

"This is the first time we have been able to show that song pitch indicates body size in song birds," said Dr Hall from the University's Department of Zoology.

The study, which began when Dr Hall was at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, has been published February 20 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Reliable communication about body size between animals is particularly important when communicating with mates or rivals. For example the bigger the rival is, the more likely it is to win in a fight so a song pitch indicating a large size may deter rivals.

"Surprisingly, there is very little evidence that the pitch of calls indicates body size differences within species, except in frogs," she said.

"In birds in particular, there has been no evidence that the pitch of songs indicated the size of the singer until now."

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130220170732.htm