ArticleEvolution letters2018
Evolutionary origins of vocal mimicry in songbirds.
Article in Evolution letters, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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14 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Vocal mimicry in Corvids.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Vocal Mimicry, and Conspecific Song and Calls, in Female Albert's Lyrebirds (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Acoustic overtones improve the discrimination of conspecific female calls by male common cuckoos from similar heterospecific calls.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Learning mimetic cuckoo call innovations from neighbors in a Chinese songbird.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Expansion of learning capacity elicited by interspecific hybridization.Science advances · 2024Article
- Higher-order sequences of vocal mimicry performed by male Albert's lyrebirds are socially transmitted and enhance acoustic contrast.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The multi-dimensional nature of vocal learning.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Variation in vocal production learning across songbirds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Defining the multidimensional phenotype: New opportunities to integrate the behavioral ecology and behavioral neuroscience of vocal learning.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Review
- An Unbiased Molecular Approach Using 3'-UTRs Resolves the Avian Family-Level Tree of Life.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Music as a Cultural Inheritance System: A Contextual-Behavioral Model of Symbolism, Meaning, and the Value of Music.Behavior and social issues · 2021Article
- The Role of the Learner in the Cultural Evolution of Vocalizations.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Dance on the Brain: Enhancing Intra- and Inter-Brain Synchrony.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
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2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
Vocal learning is an important behavior in oscines (songbirds). Some songbird species learn heterospecific sounds as well as conspecific vocalizations. The emergence of vocal mimicry is necessarily tied to the evolution of vocal learning, as mimicry requires the ability to acquire sounds through learning. As such, tracking the evolutionary origins of vocal mimicry may provide insights into the causes of variation in song learning programs among songbirds. We compiled a database of known vocal mimics that comprised 339 species from 43 families. We then traced the evolutionary history of vocal mimicry across the avian phylogeny using ancestral trait reconstruction on a dataset of oscine passerines for which vocalizations have been described. We found that the common ancestor to oscines was unlikely to mimic sounds, suggesting that song learning evolved with mechanisms to constrain learning to conspecific models. Mimicry then evolved repeatedly within the songbird clade, either through relaxation of constraints on conspecific learning or through selection for active vocal mimicry. Vocal mimicry is likely ancestral in only a handful of clades, and we detect many instances of independent origins of mimicry. Our analysis underscores the liability of vocal mimicry in songbirds, and highlights the evolutionary flexibility of song learning mechanisms.
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