ArticleBiology letters2019
New insights from female bird song: towards an integrated approach to studying male and female communication roles.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Convergent and divergent neural circuit architectures that support acoustic communication.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2022Pooled it
- Territoriality modulates the coevolution of cooperative breeding and female song in songbirds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Vocal Mimicry, and Conspecific Song and Calls, in Female Albert's Lyrebirds (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Hidden in plain sound: the scientific potential of house mouse squeaks.Biology letters · 2025Review
- Vernal growth of vocal control nucleus Area X, but not HVC, precedes gonadal recrudescence in wild black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus).Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- CHIRP-Seq: FOXP2 transcriptional targets in zebra finch brain include numerous speech and language-related genes.BMC neuroscience · 2025Article
- Song system neuroanatomy, and immediate early gene expression in a finch species with extensive male and female song.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Article
- Females counter-sing, but response to male song differs by sex in Alston's singing mouse.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Daily vocal exercise is necessary for peak performance singing in a songbird.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Females occasionally create duets with males but they never sing solo-year-round singing behaviour in an Afrotropical songbird.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
- Article
- Reciprocal processes of sensory perception and social bonding: an integrated social-sensory framework of social behavior.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2022Review
- The impacts of fine-tuning, phylogenetic distance, and sample size on big-data bioacoustics.PloS one · 2022Article
- Beyond a biased binary: A perspective on the misconceptions, challenges, and implications of studying females in avian behavioral endocrinology.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- Roars, groans and moans: Anatomical correlates of vocal diversity in polygynous deer.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Sex role similarity and sexual selection predict male and female song elaboration and dimorphism in fairy-wrens.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Defining the multidimensional phenotype: New opportunities to integrate the behavioral ecology and behavioral neuroscience of vocal learning.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Review
- Female signal jamming in a socially monogamous brood parasite.Animal behaviour · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Historically, bird song has been regarded as a sex-specific signalling trait; males sing to attract females and females drive the evolution of signal exaggeration by preferring males with ever more complex songs. This view provides no functional role for female song. Historic geographical research biases generalized pronounced sex differences of phylogenetically derived northern temperate zone songbirds to all songbirds. However, we now know that female song is common and that both sexes probably sang in the ancestor of modern songbirds. This calls for research on adaptive explanations and mechanisms regulating female song, and a reassessment of questions and approaches to identify selection pressures driving song elaboration in both sexes and subsequent loss of female song in some clades. In this short review and perspective we highlight newly emerging questions and propose a research framework to investigate female song and song sex differences across species. We encourage experimental tests of mechanism, ontogeny, and function integrated with comparative evolutionary analyses. Moreover, we discuss the wider implications of female bird song research for our understanding of male and female communication roles.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.