Detecting diel patterns in the songs of Chipping Sparrows using citizen‐science data

Abstract

Previous studies have revealed diel patterns in the songs of Chipping Sparrows (Spizella passerina), with songs shorter in duration before dawn than after. However, the extent to which this phenomenon generalizes to the full geographic range of these sparrows is unclear, as is the question of whether citizen‐science data can be used to detect diel patterns in song. We analyzed all available songs of Chipping Sparrows from the Macaulay Library and xeno‐canto databases and compared the distributions of song features of recordings made at different times of day. We show that, across their entire geographic range in North and Central America, Chipping Sparrows sing shorter songs before sunrise (dawn song) than after sunrise (day song). Furthermore, we show that Chipping Sparrows shorten their songs by singing fewer syllables, not by singing faster: the number of syllables per song accounts for the observed difference in duration, not the syllable nor the intersyllable duration. Our results demonstrate that recordings from public repositories can be used to determine whether daily song patterns exist in species even in the absence of prior fieldwork, and we further propose that citizen‐science recordings can be used to inform cross‐species hypotheses and facilitate future studies to determine whether diel patterns in song are associated with differences in social behavior.