Lombard effect onset times reveal the speed of vocal plasticity in a songbird

Abstract

There was an error published in J. Exp. Biol. 220, 1065-1071.Eqn 2 was displayed incorrectly. The correct equation appears below.We apologise to the authors and readers for any inconvenience this may have caused. ABSTRACTAnimals that use vocal signals to communicate often compensate for interference and masking from background noise by raising the amplitude of their vocalisations. This response has been termed the Lombard effect. However, despite more than a century of research, little is known how quickly animals can adjust the amplitude of their vocalisations after the onset of noise. The ability to respond quickly to increases in noise levels would allow animals to avoid signal masking and ensure their calls continue to be heard, even if they are interrupted by sudden bursts of high-amplitude noise. We tested how quickly singing male canaries (Serinus canaria) exhibit the Lombard effect by exposing them to short playbacks of white noise and measuring the speed of their responses. We show that canaries exhibit the Lombard effect in as little as 300 ms after the onset of noise and are also able to increase the amplitude of their songs midsong and mid-phrase without pausing. Our results demonstrate high vocal plasticity in this species and suggest that birds are able to adjust the amplitude of their vocalisations very rapidly to ensure they can still be heard even during sudden changes in background noise levels.

Negative impact of urban noise on sexual receptivity and clutch size in female domestic canaries

“…20 μPa; measured with a Ro‐LINE SPL meter 1, using “A” weighting, at the typical position of the test bird, 20 cm from the loudspeaker). This is close to values reported in literature for canary song in laboratory conditions (Hardman et al., ).…”

Vocal plasticity in mallards: multiple signal changes in noise and the evolution of the Lombard effect in birds

“…Others have investigated the neural substrate underlying the effect (Nonaka et al 1997, Hage et al 2006, Eliades and Wang 2012. In echolocating bats and singing canaries Serinus canaria, the Lombard effect is triggered at least 30-320 milliseconds after noise onset (Hage et al 2013, Hardman et al 2017, Luo et al 2017a, which means that vocal amplitude can track noise levels more or less in real time.…”

Telemetry reveals rapid duel-driven song plasticity in a naturalistic social environment

“…During song competitions, male songbirds might take turns, i.e avoid overlap (Hultsch and Todt, 1982;Pika et al, 2018) or adjust their emissions to avoid jamming, e.g. by increasing the amplitude of the signal (Hardman et al, 2017), by using song types that differ from those of the competitor (Vehrencamp et al, 2014), or by shifting the pitch, the latter under laboratory conditions (Turner and Brainard, 2007). Jamming the rival male by simultaneous singing, is, however, difficult to estimate for third parties such as listening females.…”