ArticleBehavioural processes2019
Regularities in zebra finch song beyond the repeated motif.
Article in Behavioural processes, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assessing the Role of Vocal Plasticity in Sociospatial Coordination.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Article
- Zebra finch tutees not only share the melody but also the rhythm of their tutor's song.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Temporal organization of song modulates vocal learning.iScience · 2025Article
- Perineuronal nets in motor circuitry regulate the performance of learned vocalizations in songbirds.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Perceptually salient differences in a species recognition cue do not promote auditory streaming in eastern grey treefrogs (Hyla versicolor).Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Article
- Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Evidence for cumulative cultural evolution in bird song.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Linking the genomic signatures of human beat synchronization and learned song in birds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Local field potentials in a pre-motor region predict learned vocal sequences.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Learning in the time of COVID: insights from the zebra finch - a social vocal-learner.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2021Review
- Toward a Computational Neuroethology of Vocal Communication: From Bioacoustics to Neurophysiology, Emerging Tools and Future Directions.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Review
- Identification, Analysis and Characterization of Base Units of Bird Vocal Communication: The White Spectacled Bulbul (Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- Comparison of methods for rhythm analysis of complex animals' acoustic signals.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Sound sequences in birdsong: how much do birds really care?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Song Morphing by Humpback Whales: Cultural or Epiphenomenal?Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- Rhythm in speech and animal vocalizations: a cross-species perspective.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2019Review
- Parallels in the sequential organization of birdsong and human speech.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Multifractal analysis reveals music-like dynamic structure in songbird rhythms.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Sequential organization of birdsong: relationships with individual quality and fitness.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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2 authors.
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Abstract
The proliferation of birdsong research into the neural mechanisms of vocal learning is indebted to the remarkable stereotypy of the zebra finch's song motif. Motifs are composed of several syllables, which birds learn to produce in a fixed order. But at a higher level of organization-the bout-zebra finch song is no longer stereotyped. Song bouts include several repetitions of the motif, which are often linked by a variable number of short "connector" vocalizations. In this conceptual methods paper, we show that combinatorial analysis alone yields an incomplete description of this bout-level structure. In contrast, studying birdsong as a time-varying analog signal can reveal patterns of flexibility in the rhythmic organization of song bouts. Visualizing large song-samples in sorted raster plots shows that motifs are strung together via two distinct categories of connections: tight or loose. Loose connections allow considerable timing variation across renditions. Even among co-tutored birds that acquired similar motifs, we observe strong individual variability in rhythms and temporal plasticity of song bouts. These findings suggest that vocal flexibility could potentially allow individuals to express a variety of behavioral states through their songs, even in species that sing only a single stereotyped motif.
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