Dancing in Singing Songbirds: Choreography in Java Sparrows

Abstract

Courtship singing in songbirds is often accompanied by gestural displays, similar to human vocalization or music that solicits body movements. This suggests that sound communication can potentially function in multimodal contexts; however, prior songbird research has primarily focused on the acoustic domain solely. In an effort to understand the multimodal signaling associated with singing, we analyzed the simultaneous singing and dancing courtship displays of Java sparrows. Specifically, we investigated the degree of singing-dancing temporal coordination in males as well as individual variability in dance sequences in males and females, as only males sing, but both sexes engage in courtship duet dancing. The results revealed a strong temporal relationship between the commencement of hopping and the production of song notes in males, which was affected not only by song learning but also by the identity of the female that received the courtship display. In addition, the dancing sequence was more complex in males than in females. Although it remained unexplained how such among- and within-individual variations contribute to the message content of courtship in the Java sparrow, multimodal courtship was not merely a byproduct of singing and warrants further scrutiny in future investigations.