Familial bias and auditory feedback regulation of vocal babbling patterns during early song development.

Daisuke Sato,Kazuhiro Wada,Azusa Sawai,Chihiro Mori

doi:10.1038/srep30323

Daisuke Sato, Kazuhiro Wada + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep30323

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Journal: Scientific Reports	Publication Date: Jul 22, 2016
Citations: 6	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Hokkaido University, Sapporo University

Abstract

Learned vocalizations are a crucial acoustic biosignal conveying individual traits in many species. Songbirds learn song patterns by listening to a tutor song and performing vocal practice during a sensitive developmental period. However, when and how individual differences in song patterns develop remain unknown. Here, we report that individual differences in vocal output exist even at the earliest song development stage, called subsong. Experiments involving the manipulation of both breeding pairs and song tutoring conditions revealed that the parental pair combination contributes to generating familial differences in syllable duration and variability in the subsong of offspring. Furthermore, after deafening, juveniles immediately changed their subsong by shortening the syllable durations but maintained the individual variability of their subsong temporal patterns, suggesting both auditory-sensitive modification and independent intrinsic regulation of vocal output. These results indicate that the temporal patterns of subsong are not merely disordered vocalization but are regulated by familial bias with sensitivity to auditory feedback, thus generating individual variability at the initiation of vocal development.

Highlights

Individual variability in the temporal patterns of subsong was explicitly observed among juvenile zebra finch males (n = 4 birds from four different families, Fig. 1d)
We found that auditory feedback contributed to the regulation of the syllable duration of subsong from the early vocal-learning period, the individual variability of subsong temporal patterns was persistently generated with a familial bias after deafening
Experimental manipulation of breeding pair and tutoring revealed that the breeding parental combination produces a familial bias in the regulation of syllable duration and variability, suggesting the possibility of a genetic contribution to the generation of individual variability in subsong patterns

Summary

Introduction

Individual variability in the temporal patterns of subsong was explicitly observed among juvenile zebra finch males (n = 4 birds from four different families, Fig. 1d). We found no significant effects of breeding pairs on the temporal features of the inter-syllable gaps in the juvenile subsongs (Fig. 3a).

Results

Conclusion