Is sexiness cumulative? Arguments from birdsong culture

Geller, Franny C.; Lahti, David C.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.09.006

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…House finch song may be a good research model for how the interplay between efficiency and complexity drives CCE, as male house finches have a social learning bias for more complex syllables [9], possibly as an adaptation to female preferences for more complex songs [74][75][76], and there appears to be pressure for efficiency at the level of both syllables and songs. That being said, CCE may not be the best framework for understanding the interaction between efficiency and complexity in birdsong, as its logic is more difficult to apply to "aesthetic" behavior [117] especially when it is optimized for female preferences that evolve to maximize inclusive fitness rather than the specific properties of songs that males sing [118].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song

Youngblood

2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Communication needs to be complex enough to be functional while minimizing learning and production costs. Recent work suggests that the vocalizations and gestures of some songbirds, cetaceans and great apes may conform to linguistic laws that reflect this trade-off between efficiency and complexity. In studies of non-human communication, though, clustering signals into types cannot be done a priori , and decisions about the appropriate grain of analysis may affect statistical signals in the data. The aim of this study was to assess the evidence for language-like efficiency and structure in house finch ( Haemorhous mexicanus ) song across three levels of granularity in syllable clustering. The results show strong evidence for Zipf's rank–frequency law, Zipf's law of abbreviation and Menzerath's law. Additional analyses show that house finch songs have small-world structure, thought to reflect systematic structure in syntax, and the mutual information decay of sequences is consistent with a combination of Markovian and hierarchical processes. These statistical patterns are robust across three levels of granularity in syllable clustering, pointing to a limited form of scale invariance. In sum, it appears that house finch song has been shaped by pressure for efficiency, possibly to offset the costs of female preferences for complexity.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song

Youngblood

2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Is sexiness cumulative? Arguments from birdsong culture

Cited by 1 publication

References 45 publications

Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song

Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About