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Juvenile songbirds acquire songs by imitation, as humans do speech. Although imitation should drive convergence within a group and divergence through drift between groups, zebra finch songs sustain high diversity within a colony, but only mild variation across colonies. We investigated this phenomenon by analyzing vocal learning statistics in 160 tutor-pupil pairs from a large breeding colony. Song imitation was persistently accurate in some families, but poor in other families. This could not be attributed to genetic differences, as fostered pupils copied their tutors’ vocal sounds as accurately or as poorly as the tutor’s biological pupils. We discovered two effects that explained the finding: first, even in cases of accurate imitation, pupils often recombined imitated syllables to form new units, and, therefore, distributions of syllable types in pupils’ songs were not well correlated with their tutors’; second, rare vocalizations in tutors’ songs became more abundant in their pupils’ songs, and vice versa. Consequently, cultural transmission of tutor songs that were high in acoustic diversity were stronger than those that were low in diversity. We suggest that a frequency dependent balanced imitation of vocal repertoires prevents the extinction of rare song elements and the overabundance of common ones. Within a group it promotes repertoire diversity, while across groups it constrains drift. Together with syllable recombination, balanced imitation sustains cross-generational homeostasis that prevents the collapse of vocal culture into either complete uniformity or chaos.
Keywords
zebra finch, songs, vocal learning, song imitation
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This is a list of supplementary files associated with this preprint. Click to download.
- FigS1.png
Supplementary Figure 1: Distribution of song syllable acoustic similarities in the colony.
- FigS2.png
Suppl. Figure 2: tutor vs. pupil diversities of core-motif syllable types transitions are uncorrelated.
- FigS3.png
Supplementary Fig. 3: time course of song diversity during the lifetime of the colony
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This preprint is under consideration at a Nature Portfolio Journal. A preprint is a preliminary version of a manuscript that has not completed peer review at a journal. Research Square does not conduct peer review prior to posting preprints. The posting of a preprint on this server should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its validity or suitability for dissemination as established information or for guiding clinical practice.
Nature journals have partnered with Research Square to offer In Review, a journal-integrated preprint deposition service.
Article
Badges
Prescreen
This manuscript passed our Prescreen assessment
Complete author information
Appropriate declaration statements
Potential risks to human health
Prescreen
Peer Review Timeline
CURRENT STATUS: Under Review
Version 1
Posted 24 Sep, 2020
Metrics
Comments: 0
PDF Downloads: ...
HTML Views: ...
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Juvenile songbirds acquire songs by imitation, as humans do speech. Although imitation should drive convergence within a group and divergence through drift between groups, zebra finch songs sustain high diversity within a colony, but only mild variation across colonies. We investigated this phenomenon by analyzing vocal learning statistics in 160 tutor-pupil pairs from a large breeding colony. Song imitation was persistently accurate in some families, but poor in other families. This could not be attributed to genetic differences, as fostered pupils copied their tutors’ vocal sounds as accurately or as poorly as the tutor’s biological pupils. We discovered two effects that explained the finding: first, even in cases of accurate imitation, pupils often recombined imitated syllables to form new units, and, therefore, distributions of syllable types in pupils’ songs were not well correlated with their tutors’; second, rare vocalizations in tutors’ songs became more abundant in their pupils’ songs, and vice versa. Consequently, cultural transmission of tutor songs that were high in acoustic diversity were stronger than those that were low in diversity. We suggest that a frequency dependent balanced imitation of vocal repertoires prevents the extinction of rare song elements and the overabundance of common ones. Within a group it promotes repertoire diversity, while across groups it constrains drift. Together with syllable recombination, balanced imitation sustains cross-generational homeostasis that prevents the collapse of vocal culture into either complete uniformity or chaos.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
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