<i>Koe</i>: Web‐based software to classify acoustic units and analyse sequence structure in animal vocalizations

Fukuzawa, Yukio; Webb, Wesley H.; Pawley, Matthew D. M.; Roper, Michelle M.; Marsland, Stephen; Brunton, Dianne H.; Gilman, Andrew

doi:10.1111/2041-210x.13336

Cited by 32 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The Java sparrow has been widely bred in captivity as part of ex situ conservation efforts (BirdLife International, 2018) and as a popular species in aviculture (Restall, 1996). Genetic and behavioral change is frequently reported in captive breeding programs and can accumulate over relatively short time periods, spanning few generations (Håkansson and Jensen, 2005;Frankham, 2008;Suzuki et al, 2013), and these differences may extend to vocal behavior (Tanimoto et al, 2017). The potential for song evolution and cultural divergence in the Java sparrow is, therefore, likely to be of interest to conservation practitioners, as vocal changes may influence the success of conservation programs and in particular reintroduction programs (Lewis et al, 2020;Crates et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Like Father Like Son: Cultural and Genetic Contributions to Song Inheritance in an Estrildid Finch

et al. 2021

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Social learning of vocalizations is integral to song inheritance in oscine passerines. However, other factors, such as genetic inheritance and the developmental environment, can also influence song phenotype. The relative contributions of these factors can have a strong influence on song evolution and may affect important evolutionary processes such as speciation. However, relative contributions are well-described only for a few species and are likely to vary with taxonomy. Using archived song data, we examined patterns of song inheritance in a domestic population of Java sparrows (Lonchura oryzivora), some of which had been cross-fostered. Six-hundred and seventy-six songs from 73 birds were segmented and classified into notes and note subtypes (N = 22,972), for which a range of acoustic features were measured. Overall, we found strong evidence for cultural inheritance of song structure and of the acoustic characteristics of notes; sons’ song syntax and note composition were similar to that of their social fathers and were not influenced by genetic relatedness. For vocal consistency of note subtypes, a measure of vocal performance, there was no apparent evidence of social or genetic inheritance, but both age and developmental environment influenced consistency. These findings suggest that high learning fidelity of song material, i.e., song structure and note characteristics, could allow novel variants to be preserved and accumulate over generations, with implications for evolution and conservation. However, differences in vocal performance do not show strong links to cultural inheritance, instead potentially serving as condition dependent signals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Like Father Like Son: Cultural and Genetic Contributions to Song Inheritance in an Estrildid Finch

et al. 2021

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“…The syllables selected in Luscinia were then imported into the open-source database program Koe (www.koe.io.ac.nz; Fukuzawa et al, 2020) where syllables were systematically labelled into categories. Syllable types were categorised by eye and ear based on a range of features including shape of elements, fundamental frequency, frequency modulation, harmonics and duration.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual and temporal variation in New Zealand bellbird song repertoires

Roper

Webb

Fukuzawa

et al. 2021

Preprint

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How song repertoires vary within species and change over time is well studied in male songbirds. However, variation in female song repertoires remains largely unstudied despite female song being much more common and complex than once assumed. We investigated the song syllable repertoire of the New Zealand bellbird (Anthornis melanura), a species where both sexes have complex but sexually dimorphic song. We compared songs at individual and population levels to investigate sex and temporal variation of syllable repertoires. We detected 96 syllable types in the population over four years, of which 58% were unique to males, 32% unique to females and 9% were shared between the sexes. The population syllable repertoire of both sexes changed substantially across years with similar turnover rates (Jaccard's similarity coefficients; female 52.9–69.0%; male 58.6–73.7%). Furthermore, many syllable types, unique to each sex, varied in prevalence within the population across years. The syllable repertoire sizes of individuals were higher for males than females (13–32, n = 7 and 6–16, n = 8, respectively). Although these sample sizes were low, the temporal variation in syllable prevalence and turnover for individuals were similar to patterns at the population level. Overall, male and female bellbirds exhibited similarities in temporal patterns of yearly repertoire composition, with rapid changes in syllable prevalence, but females had fewer syllable types than males. We suggest that these similarities and differences are consistent with male and female song repertoires being driven by similar but not identical selection pressures.

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“…We used an interactive ordination plot created by KOE as a basis for further manual audiovisual syllable classification. KOE automatically extracted various temporal and spectral syllable features, and used them to calculate an ordination between different syllables based on t‐distributed stochastic neighbor embedding analysis (Fukuzawa et al 2020). We audio‐visually inspected resulting syllable clusters to classify them into syllable types.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The multifaceted vocal duets of white‐browed sparrow weavers are based on complex duetting rules

Lemazina

Trost

Gahr

et al. 2021

Journal of Avian Biology

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In some bird species, mated pairs sing duet songs for pair bond maintenance and joint territory defense. Duet partners often follow specific duetting rules, such as answering rules and duet codes, to construct their duet songs. Previous studies mainly concentrated on species that repeat particular phrase pairings during duetting. Our study aims to add to the comparative aspect of duetting research by investigating duet structure in songs of white-browed sparrow weavers Plocepasser mahali, a songbird species that does not repeat the same type of vocalization but switches between different types of vocal elements within one duet song. We used lightweight radio-telemetric microphone transmitters to record the vocal activity in both individuals of duetting pairs simultaneously. This technique enabled us not only to investigate duetting behavior in naturally behaving animals, but also to assign each vocalization to the respective individual while maintaining the precise temporal relationship between the vocalizations of both partners. Our data reveal that although white-browed sparrow weavers share a large part of their sex-specific vocal repertoires with same-sex birds of other pairs, duetting partners adhere to pair-specific answering rules to generate their highly complex duet songs. Moreover, partners can combine answering rules into consistent duet trains. Duet trains generally represent only the core of the duet songs, while at the beginning and the end of duet songs, partners arrange their vocalization types more flexibly. In addition to completely pair-specific duet trains, duet trains of whitebrowed sparrow weaver pairs can include subsequences that are shared between different pairs. The sharing pattern we find in this species suggests that in combination to pair-specific duetting rules, mated pairs use duetting rules that have been acquired prior to pair formation.

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Koe: Web‐based software to classify acoustic units and analyse sequence structure in animal vocalizations

Cited by 32 publications

References 20 publications

Like Father Like Son: Cultural and Genetic Contributions to Song Inheritance in an Estrildid Finch

Like Father Like Son: Cultural and Genetic Contributions to Song Inheritance in an Estrildid Finch

Sexual and temporal variation in New Zealand bellbird song repertoires

The multifaceted vocal duets of white‐browed sparrow weavers are based on complex duetting rules

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