ArticleNature communications2021
Balanced imitation sustains song culture in zebra finches.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Humans, but not zebra finches, produce spontaneously isochronous song through the lifespan.iScience · 2026Article
- A synaptic locus of song learning.Nature · 2026Article
- Variation in song structure does not predict associative learning performance in zebra finches (Taeniopygia castanotis) raised under controlled cultural conditions.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Article
- A complex social-acoustical environment supports development and maintenance in the zebra finch auditory pallium.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Detection of Individual Differences Encoded in Sequential Variations of Elements in Zebra Finch Songs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Learning the sound inventory of a complex vocal skill via an intrinsic reward.Science advances · 2024Article
- A predisposed motor bias shapes individuality in vocal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Incentivizing free riders improves collective intelligence in social dilemmas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Steroid-dependent plasticity in the song control system: Perineuronal nets and HVC neurogenesis.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2023Review
- Effects of the depletion of neural progenitors by focal X-ray irradiation on song production and perception in canaries.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Complex foraging behaviours in wild birds emerge from social learning and recombination of components.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for the Analysis and Decoding of Dolphin Communication.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The Role of the Learner in the Cultural Evolution of Vocalizations.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Zebra finch song is a very short-range signal in the wild: evidence from an integrated approach.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Songbirds acquire songs by imitation, as humans do speech. Although imitation should drive convergence within a group and divergence through drift between groups, zebra finch songs sustain high diversity within a colony, but mild variation across colonies. We investigated this phenomenon by analyzing vocal learning statistics in 160 tutor-pupil pairs from a large breeding colony. Song imitation is persistently accurate in some families, but poor in others. This is not attributed to genetic differences, as fostered pupils copied their tutors' songs as accurately or poorly as biological pupils. Rather, pupils of tutors with low song diversity make more improvisations compared to pupils of tutors with high song diversity. We suggest that a frequency dependent balanced imitation prevents extinction of rare song elements and overabundance of common ones, promoting repertoire diversity within groups, while constraining drift across groups, which together prevents the collapse of vocal culture into either complete uniformity or chaos.
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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.