Mate recognition by female zebra finch: Analysis of individuality in male call and first investigations on female decoding process

Abstract

Zebra finches are monogamous birds living in large assemblies, which represent a source of confusion for recognition between mates. Because the members of a pair use distance calls to remain in contact, call-based mate recognition is highly probable in this species. Whereas it had been previously demonstrated in males [Vignal, C., Mathevon, N., Mottin, S., 2004. Audience drives male songbird response to mate's voice. Nature 430, 448-451], call-based mate recognition remained to be shown in females. By analysing the acoustic structure of male calls, we investigated the existence of an individual signature and identified the involved acoustic cues. We tested to see if females can identify their mates on the basis of their calls alone, and performed preliminary experiments using modified signals to investigate the acoustic basis of this recognition. Playback tests carried on six individuals showed that a female zebra finch is able to perform the call-based recognition of its mate. Our experiments suggested that the female uses both the energy spectrum and the frequency modulation of the male signal. More experiments are now needed to decipher precisely which acoustic cues are used by females for recognition.

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

“…More naturalistic studies of songbirds, although they tend to examine a smaller range of variation, also support the importance of frequency for vocal identification (Brooks and Falls 1975b;for review, see Falls 1982;Vignal et al 2008). A greater selectivity for frequency than timing cues for individual identification has also been seen in mice.…”

“…In general, we expect that different parameters of communication sounds may be important for different tasks. Human listeners, for example, use different cues to determine the identity of a word versus the identity of its speaker (Avendaño et al 2004;O'Shaughnessy 1986;Walden et al 1978). Different aspects of song may carry information about a singer's species, family, identity, distance, and social intent (Becker 1982;Marler 1960;Miller 1982).…”

“…Like zebra finches, humans depend heavily on pitch cues to identify speakers (O'Shaughnessy 1986) but not to identify phonemes (Avendaño et al 2004). Word duration can be important as well (Walden 1978) but is less reliable than spectral features. Thus the acoustic parameters used by these songbirds to identify individuals may be closer to those used by human beings to identify speakers rather than words.…”

“…B. Miller 1979;E. H. Miller 1982;Nelson 1989;Nelson and Marler 1989;Prather et al 2009;Scharff et al 1998;Stripling et al 2003;Vignal et al 2004Vignal et al , 2008 on the basis of their learned vocalizations. A bird's song is a high-dimensional stimulus not unlike a human voice with structure that can be parameterized in many ways.…”

Learning to cope with degraded sounds: Female zebra finches can improve their expertise at discriminating between male voices at long distance

“…In addition, songbirds show remarkable perceptual abilities to discriminate between noisy signals (Brémond, 1978;Hulse, 2002). However, only a small number of studies have examined individual discrimination in degraded calls (Aubin and Jouventin, 1998;Jouventin et al, 1999;Mathevon et al, 2008;Vignal et al, 2008). More specifically, a single study investigated the question of longrange individual recognition in a songbird living in an acoustically constraining environment: in the white-browed warbler Basileuterus leucoblepharus, a species from the Brazilian Atlantic forest, the individual signature encoded in the male song degrades rapidly during propagation, restricting individual recognition to neighbouring territorial males .…”