Body mass and habitat correlates of song structure in a primitive group of birds

Abstract

We assessed relationships between acoustic frequency, body mass, and habitat in tinamous. This monophyletic group of primitive birds comprises c. 47 ground dwelling species whose habitats range from dense humid forest to open grasslands. The relationship between frequency and body mass was found to be negative, while the songs of open‐habitat species exhibited higher frequencies and a wider bandwidth than the closed‐habitat ones. Residual variation in song frequency, after controlling for the effect of body mass and phylogeny, tends to differ among habitats. However, a statistical test of this pattern was not possible because of the existence of only five pairs of sister species differing in habitat. In spite of this, positive contrasts of bandwidth were associated with positive contrasts of habitat, confirming that songs of open‐habitat species have a wider bandwidth than those of their more closed habitat relatives. © 2002 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2002, 77, 423–430.

Genetic and developmental effects, and morphological influences on the acoustic structure of individual distance calls in female Bengalese finchesLonchura striatavar.domestica

“…Interspecific studies on the relationships between morphological traits and the acoustic features of vocalizations (Ryan and Brenowitz 1985, Badyaev and Leaf 1997, Tubaro and Mahler 1998, Palacios and Tubaro 2000, Bertelli and Tubaro 2002, Seddon 2005, Price et al 2006 suggested that the frequency of vocalization is also negatively correlated with bill and body size at the intraspecific level. Contrary to this prediction, however, we found no morphological effect on the peak frequency of distance calls.…”

“…It is commonly accepted that larger birds use lower frequencies Brenowitz 1985, Wallschläger 1980), because body size tends to be associated with multiple factors such as syrinx size, tracheal length, vocal track resonance, and sound radiation, which can influence vocalizations (Lambrechts 1996, Suthers et al 1999. Although the mechanisms of avian vocal production is diversified and complicated (review in Suthers 2003), numerous empirical studies have shown negative correlations between body size and vocalization frequency by interspecific and phylogenetic comparisons (Ryan and Brenowitz 1985, Badyaev and Leaf 1997, Tubaro and Mahler 1998, Bertelli and Tubaro 2002, Price et al 2006, Laiolo and Roland 2003. Besides this general body size effect, bill morphology and movement also potentially affect the frequency spectrum of avian vocalizations as an acoustic resonance filter, but the nature of this filer has not been fully understood; some studies implicated that beak as a part of the vocal track filter (e.g.…”

Comparing vocal structures of the parasitic and nonparasitic groups in Cuculinae

“…In these situations, simple and low-frequency calls may facilitate their ability to manage relatively large breeding ranges. Ecological characteristics of breeding area such as habitat openness and humidity could also favour low-frequency calls (McCracken and Sheldon 1997;Bertelli and Tubaro 2002;Brumm 2004). Unlike the nonparasitic species, many of the parasitic species belonging to the family Cuculidae migrate from a humid tropical zone to a relatively dry temperate zone to breed, and they tend to occupy open habitats (Krüger and Davies 2002).…”

Acoustic Signal Evolution: Biomechanics, Size, and Performance

“…Recent comparative studies of body size × frequency scaling have achieved greater precision by attending to the lack of statistical independence among species due to phylogenetic relatedness, using independent contrasts analysis. In most of these studies, patterns still hold between body size or mass and song/call frequency, for example, across ∼200 species of antbirds inhabiting rainforests in the Neotropics (Seddon, 2005), 47 species of tinamou, a primitive group of ground dwelling birds in Central and South America (Bertelli and Tubaro, 2002), and 28 species of crows and ravens spanning their worldwide range (Laiolo and Rolando, 2003). In contrast to these comparative studies, within-species analyses in birds have not always revealed tight relationships between body size and vocal frequency (e.g., Logue et al, 2007;Cardoso et al, 2008;Patel et al, 2010but see Hall et al, 2013.…”