The Development of Local Song Preferences in Female Cowbirds (Molothrus ater): Flock Living Stimulates Learning

Abstract

We carried out two experiments across 2 yr on song perception in female cowbirds (Molothrus ater). In the first experiment, juvenile and adult female brown‐headed cowbirds, living in same‐sex flocks in outdoor aviaries, were periodically tutored with recordings of local male cowbirds’ songs. In the spring, four adult male cowbirds were placed with half of the females for a 12‐d period. We then tested song preferences of all females by measuring copulation solicitation displays during the breeding season. We found that the females exposed only to tape‐tutor songs preferred those songs to those of the unfamiliar males used as companions and that the females allowed to interact with males preferred their songs over the familiar tape‐tutor songs. These data establish the modifiability of female cowbirds’ song preferences at the level of local song. In a second experiment, we studied the playback responses of juvenile females, hand‐reared from the egg, who were tape‐tutored only in the spring in the presence or absence of adult females. There were no differences between the responses of juveniles housed with or without adult females and the hand‐reared juveniles were significantly less responsive to song than adult females. Adult females responded more to familiar songs than to the unfamiliar songs: juvenile females made no such distinction. Taken as a whole, these data are the first to document that female cowbirds’ song preferences for local song can be reshaped by post‐natal experience. These data complement recent study in cowbirds and other species showing that socially more complex contexts reveal plasticity in female song preferences that are not apparent when learning opportunities are constrained by impoverished laboratory settings.

Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world

“…This ultimately leads males to sing a more advanced song that will successfully attract many females. Females, in turn, learn their preferences for certain male songs by watching and hearing the responses of other females in the group [13, 14]. Thus, both song production and preferences emerge through social interactions.…”

IT'S NOT JUST THE SONG: Male Visual Displays Enhance Female Sexual Responses to Song in Brown-Headed Cowbirds

“…The Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) is an ideal subject for this research topic because it has an elaborate and complex song display and there is a wealth of published reports on its sexual and singing behavior in both nature and captivity (e. g., Friedmann 1929, Dufty 1986, Rothstein et al 1988, Freeberg et al 1999, white et al 2002, King et al 2003, O'Loghlen and Rothstein 2004, west et al 2006. In addition, the cowbird is one of the few species in which female vocal preferences as revealed by CSD experiments relate to confirmed variation in mating success in nature (O'Loghlen and Rothstein 1995Rothstein , yokel 1986 and in captivity (west et al 1981, 1998).…”

Acoustic mate copying: female cowbirds attend to other females' vocalizations to modify their song preferences

“…Recently, evidence of plasticity in female cowbirds' preferences has been discovered (Gros-Louis et al 2003;King et al 2003;West et al 2006). This series of experiments used tutoring preparations where females were exposed to broadcasts of song variants or to live males prior to the breeding season.…”