ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2002
Quality of song learning affects female response to male bird song.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 141 citations in OpenAlex.
- Vocal Phenology of Forest Tinamous Along a Latitudinal Gradient: Effects of Daylength and Precipitation.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Rhythmic Roots: The Adaptive Functions of Vocal Isochrony and Its Role in Human Music and Language Evolution.Psihologijske teme = Psychological themes = Psychological topics · 2025Article
- Article
- Evidence for acoustic discrimination in lemurs: A playback study on wild indrisCurrent zoology · 2023Article
- Auditory sensitivity and vocal acoustics in five species of estrildid songbirds.Animal behaviour · 2023Article
- Neuroendocrine and behavioral response to testosterone-induced female song in canaries (Serinus canaria).Physiology & behavior · 2022Article
- Cognition and reproductive success in cowbirds.Learning & behavior · 2022Article
- A researcher's guide to the comparative assessment of vocal production learning.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Variation in vocal production learning across songbirds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Mechanisms of Cultural Evolution in the Songs of Wild Bird Populations.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Like Father Like Son: Cultural and Genetic Contributions to Song Inheritance in an Estrildid Finch.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Species-level repertoire size predicts a correlation between individual song elaboration and reproductive success.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Introduced parasite changes host phenotype, mating signal and hybridization risk: Philornis downsi effects on Darwin's finch song.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Influence of early-life nutritional stress on songbird memory formation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Early life conditions that impact song learning in male zebra finches also impact neural and behavioral responses to song in females.Developmental neurobiology · 2018Article
- The effect of early life conditions on song traits in male dippers (Cinclus cinclus).PloS one · 2018Article
- A neuronal signature of accurate imitative learning in wild-caught songbirds (swamp sparrows, Melospiza georgiana).Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Activity Dependent Modulation of Granule Cell Survival in the Accessory Olfactory Bulb at Puberty.Frontiers in neuroanatomy · 2017Article
- Searching for the origins of musicality across species.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Review
- He hears, she hears: are there sex differences in auditory processing?Developmental neurobiology · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bird song is unusual as a sexually selected trait because its expression depends on learning as well as genetic and other environmental factors. Prior work has demonstrated that males who are deprived of the opportunity to learn produce songs that function little if at all in male-female interactions. We asked whether more subtle variation in male song-learning abilities influences female response to song. Using a copulation solicitation assay, we measured the response of female song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) to songs of laboratory-reared males that differed in the amount of learned versus invented material that they included and in the degree to which learned material accurately matched the model from which it was copied. Females responded significantly more to songs that had been learned better, by either measure. Females did not discriminate between the best-learned songs of laboratory-reared males and songs of wild males used as models during learning. These results provide, to our knowledge, a first experimental demonstration that variation in learning abilities among males plays a functionally important part in the expression of a sexually selected trait, and further provide support for the hypothesis that song functions as an indicator of male quality because it reflects variation in response to early developmental stress.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.