Speaker
Description
Singing by songbirds is a complex, culturally learned motor skill acquired during juvenile development and in some songbird species also before the onset of the breeding season. Outside of these specific periods, it is believed that the singing motor program is stable or ‘crystallized’, and 'solo' songs are used to illustrate the complexity of birdsong learning and production. I will show that in canaries (Serinus canaria), social interactions during the breeding season induce changes in birdsong. Using custom-made telemetric backpack technology to monitor song-based communication from freely behaving canaries, we find that adult males temporally overlap their songs during aggressive ‘duels’. Singing duels are characterized by increased song length, thereby enhancing singing performance and flexibility of a sexually selected behaviour. Our finding reveal song plasticity during male-directed singing in social environments, providing a model of fast plasticity of complex motor skills during singing dueling contests in which birds co-vary their songs online.
