Black-capped chickadees categorize songs based on features that vary geographically

Hahn, Allison H.; Hoeschele, Marisa; Guillette, Lauren M.; Hoang, John; McMillan, Neil; Congdon, Jenna V.; Campbell, Kimberley A.; Mennill, Daniel J.; Otter, Ken A.; Grava, Thibault; Ratcliffe, Laurene M.; Sturdy, Christopher B.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.11.017

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Similar to the perception of dominance, perception of geography can be encoded as open-ended categories. We have shown (Hahn et al, 2016) that birds transfer their training to novel vocalizations and also show intermediate responding to vocalizations in which the controlling variable (duration) was intermediate between the different geographic locations. Identifying the other acoustic features relevant to geographic differences will be the focus of subsequent work.…”

Section: Geography: Where Are You From?mentioning

confidence: 81%

“…However, when birds are tested either behaviorally or perceptually, as we have done in our work, we see that birds differentially response to vocalizations from the different dominance categories (i.e., the vocalizations are either from birds that are the most dominant or most subordinate in a winter flock). This differential responding can either be untrained in a playback experiment (Hoeschele et al, 2010) or trained in an operant conditioning test (Hahn et al, 2016). While there is a continuum of dominance or rank, when grouped and presented the way we and others do in our tasks, chickadees treat them as belonging to a category.…”

Section: Dominance: Who's the Boss?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following our bioacoustic studies, we designed an operant discrimination study (Hahn et al, 2016) to verify that birds did perceive geographic differences as functional open-ended categories, and then to further test the mechanisms underlying this perception. In common with other similar tasks we trained birds in either a true category discrimination in which all rewarded songs were from one geographic region, or a pseudo category discrimination, where songs were randomly assigned with half coming from each region.…”

Section: Geography: Where Are You From?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Moving from Perceptual to Functional Categories in Songbirds

Sturdy¹,

Campbell²,

Congdon³

et al. 2017

IJCP

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Category perception, as Herrnstein (1990) defined it, is a powerful and pervasive cognitive ability possessed by every species in which it has been adequately tested. We have studied category perception of vocal communication signals in songbirds for over 20 years. Our first studies provided us with an understanding of songbird vocal category production and perception, clarifying perceptual categorization and the underlying mechanisms. More recent work has moved towards understanding functional vocal categories such as sex, dominance, species, and geography. Some of our most recent work has moved into the realm of conceptual knowledge, with studies aimed at understanding birds’ ability to deal with concepts of sameness and danger (i.e., threat level). Here we provide key examples that effectively show the wide range of abilities possessed and used by songbirds.

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Section: Geography: Where Are You From?mentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Dominance: Who's the Boss?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Geography: Where Are You From?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Moving from Perceptual to Functional Categories in Songbirds

Sturdy¹,

Campbell²,

Congdon³

et al. 2017

IJCP

Self Cite

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“…The possible reason for parametric variation may be habitat matching and genetic adaptation. Hahn et al, (2016) explained if a species occurs in a variety of different habitats, geographical variation in its song might stem from the process of acoustic adaptation.…”

Section: Discussion:-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic variations in the geographically isolated populations of L punctulata in India.

Kathait¹,

Sharma²,

Chandola-Saklani³

et al. 2016

IJAR

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Birds use verity of acoustic signals for their daily communication. These signals are very important for their daily life in individual recognition, food hunting, prey alarm etc. For successful reproduction acoustic signals are very important in mate recognition and attraction. However signals are very much affected by local habitat and geographical pressures and well reflected in populations and genetic structure. In present work geographical variation in the calls of L punctulata has been investigated. Results indicate that L punctulata is mono-syllabic in morning calls. Spectrographically no variations were observed across all locations. However in parametric comparisons variations were observed across all geographical regions. Population level acoustic signatures were seen in majority of individuals. UPGMA tree based on the parametric distance indicates population level structure in both notes with some admixture. This indicates the possibility of local level difference in genetic structure of L punctulata. Copy Right, IJAR, 2016,. All rights reserved.

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“…6 The acoustic structure of human speech and animal vocalisations encodes information within parameters such as frequency (Townsend et al 2014), amplitude (Gustison & Townsend 2015;Reichard & Anderson 2015), rate of production (Clay et al 2012) duration (Dentressangle et al 2012) and energy distribution (Linhart et al 2015). This information may be static and relate to individual identity (Vannoni & McElligott 2007;Favaro et al 2015), age, body size and sex (Briefer & McElligott 2011a), geographical discrimination (Hahn et al 2016) or recognition systems between mothers and offspring (Briefer & McElligott 2011b). Flexible traits, such as signaller motivation, may be reflected in vocal frequency, amplitude, duration and rate in both humans (Scherer 1986) and animals (Taylor & Reby 2010;Briefer 2012), as shown in animals such as meerkats (Suricata suricatta) (Hollén & Manser 2007) and rats (Rattus norvegicus) (Knutson et al 2002).…”

Section: Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The vocalisations and behaviour of chickens in anticipation of rewards

McGrath¹

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The vocalisations of non-human animals can serve as indicators of motivational or emotional state. The anticipation of rewards activates areas of the brain associated with reward and 'wanting', leading to consummatory behaviour and pleasure. Hence, anticipatory behaviour and vocalisations, prior to consumption of an item, could indicate whether animals are experiencing rewarding environments. This thesis aims to investigate whether domestic chickens Gallus gallus produce specific reward-related vocalisations, and whether they can be understood by humans. It first examines the behaviour of chickens in anticipation of different types of reward. It goes on to characterise the vocalisations made in anticipation of rewards, and explore variations in the acoustic structure of these calls. A playback paradigm is further used to study how other chickens respond to reward-related vocalisations, and whether there is any referential information encoded in these vocalisations. Finally, this project asks whether humans can identify chickens' 'reward' calls, and whether they can perceive the arousal levels or valence represented by these vocalisations.Twelve hens were exposed to a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, using sound cues to signal the availability of two food rewards (mealworms and the hens' normal food), one non-food reward (a container of dustbathing substrate) and a sound-neutral event (sound cue, no reward). A mutedneutral treatment (no sound cue, no reward) provided a baseline for behavioural and vocal observations. This study revealed that chickens increase their activity levels as a general response to reward. Quantifiable differences in the frequency and duration of goal-directed behaviours indicated that hens ranked the rewards differentially, and appeared to be more motivated to access the dustbathing reward.Hens consistently produced a specific 'reward' call, described elsewhere as a 'food' call, in anticipation of all rewards, including the non-food reward. The cue signalling the dustbathing substrate elicited the highest proportion of these calls, suggesting that this reward induced the most arousal in hens. Variation in the acoustic structure of calls appeared to reflect differences in arousal.The peak frequency of reward calls made in anticipation of the dusty substrate was 45-75 Hz lower (p=0.01) than those made in anticipation of food rewards. This is the first study to reveal that chickens produce a 'reward' call. It also demonstrates that the frequency-related parameters of this call vary according to different contexts.Referential information relating to environmental stimuli, such as a source of food or the presence of a predator, is sometimes encoded in the type, or structural variation, of animal acoustic iii signals. If referential information is encoded in reward calls transmitted by hens, receivers should respond as if they had experienced the stimuli themselves. In this phase of the project, twelve hens were exposed to a playback paradigm using calls recorded from other hens made when antici...

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Black-capped chickadees categorize songs based on features that vary geographically

Cited by 12 publications

References 66 publications

Moving from Perceptual to Functional Categories in Songbirds

Moving from Perceptual to Functional Categories in Songbirds

Acoustic variations in the geographically isolated populations of L punctulata in India.

The vocalisations and behaviour of chickens in anticipation of rewards

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