Our findings also suggest that males with larger home ranges are more tolerant toward intruders, which could reflect a trade-off between tendencies to respond strongly and to range widely. Thus, by probing residents, intruders can obtain reliable information about subsequent response probabilities, while eavesdroppers from a distance, who can use auditory information only, would not receive sufficient predictive information. We also show that more explorative males (as determined by a novel environment test) and males with smaller home ranges sang more and spent more time near the loudspeaker in response to both simulated intrusions. The time spent close to the loudspeaker in response to an initial simulated intrusion predicted the same response variable during a second simulated intrusion on the next day, whereas singing activity during the first simulated intrusion did not predict singing during the second simulated intrusion. We used wild great tits ( Parus major ) as a model species in repeated song playback trials, simulating territorial intrusions combined with radio-tracking before and during playback trials. Yet, the extent to which responses of a resident to a territorial intrusion predict its future responses and its overall spatial behavior (home range) within a neighborhood is less well understood. These responses could be used by intruders and distant eavesdroppers to predict future responses or to compare responses across competitors. Songbirds are among the best-studied territorial signaling taxa, and when competitors start singing during a territorial intrusion, residents usually show elevated spatial and vocal responses. Territorial animals often use signals to advertise territorial occupancy within their larger home ranges. Our results suggest that both sexual selection and natural selection have been important sources of selection on aerial displays in passerines. When we included species where the sexual function of displays has not been explicitly described but is likely to occur, we found that aerial displaying was also associated with smaller body size and increased male plumage coloration. These species also exhibited higher levels of polygyny, had more elongated wings, migrated over longer distances and bred at higher latitudes. Our multi-variate models revealed that species with males that perform aerial displays inhabited open rather than closed (forested) habitats. In this study, we scored the presence and absence of aerial displays in males of 1732 species of passerine birds (Passeriformes) and employed Bayesian phylogenetically informed mixed models to test for associations between aerial displays and a set of life-history and environmental predic-tors. Nevertheless, little attention has been focused on identifying correlates of large-scale diversity in this trait. These integrated findings provide an ecological context for the interpretation of laboratory studies of this species and indicate that the vocal communication distance of the main laboratory species for avian acoustics contrasts strikingly with songbirds that use their song as a long-range advertisement signal.Īerial displaying is a flamboyant part of the sexual behaviour of several volant animal groups, including birds. By integrating calibrated sound recordings, sound transmission experiments and social ecology of zebra finches in the wild with insights from hearing physiology we show that wild zebra finch song is a very short-range signal with an audible range of about nine meters and that even the louder distance calls do not carry much farther (up to about fourteen meters).
Using data from the wild, we here provide an ecological context for a wealth of laboratory studies. In the wild, however, zebra finch song differs strikingly from songbirds commonly studied in the wild as zebra finch males sing most after mating and in the absence of territoriality.
Among birds, the zebra finch is the prime model organism in bioacoustics, yet almost exclusively studied in the lab. Birdsong is typically seen as a long-range signal functioning in mate attraction and territory defense.
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