Pereira-Castañeda, Daniel A.

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    Function of song type matching in Adelaide’s Warbler (Setophaga adelaidae) in Cabo Rojo Wildlife Refuge (Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico)
    (2013) Pereira-Castañeda, Daniel A.; Logue, David M.; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Macchiavelli, Raúl E.; Bird Picó, Fernando J.; Department of Biology; Quiñones, Carlos
    Many species of birds sing the same song-type that a neighbor has just sung, a behavior known as song-type matching. Song-type matching has long been considered a signal of aggressive intent, but recent experiments fail to support a key prediction of that hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis is that superior singers match because matching allows eavesdroppers to better assess the singers‟ relative performance. I conducted two playback experiments on male Adelaide‟s warblers (Setophaga adelaidae), one before dawn and one after dawn, to test predictions of both hypotheses. In both experiments I broadcast modified recordings of three song-types that were known to occur in the focal bird‟s repertoire. One song-type was digitally accelerated by 15% (the “fast” stimulus), one was accelerated by 1% (“control”), and one was decelerated by 15% (“slow”). Faster songs are harder to sing, and represent higher performance quality in song birds. In the post-dawn trials, I simulated an intrusion into the subject‟s territory by first playing stimuli from the territory border and then presenting a taxidermic mount in the territory center, providing the subject with an opportunity to attack the simulated intruder. The aggressive intent hypothesis was invoked to predict that males who eventually attacked the mount would match song more than those that did not. If, however, song-type matching accentuates relative performance, subjects should preferentially match slow songs and avoid matching fast songs. Attackers actually matched song less often than did non-attackers, so the aggression prediction was not supported. Subjects produced the most matches in response to slow stimuli, and the fewest in response to fast stimuli. I conclude that male Adelaide‟s warblers match song-types to influence the relative assessment of their singing performance, and not to signal aggressive intent. This work is the first evidence supporting alignability hypothesis.