Influence of Auditory Stimulation on the Development of Syntactical and Temporal Features in European Starling Song

Abstract

ABsTRAcr.-We investigated how European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) were influenced during song learning by acoustic patterns lacking certain syntactical and temporal features of the species-specific song. Hand-reared males were exposed to a sequence of heterospecific song patterns (song types of Common Nightingales, Luscinia megarhynchos) which, in contrast to normal starling song, were not reiterated, were evenly separated by breaks throughout the entire tutor sequence, and did not show an increase in maximum frequency from the beginning to the end of the sequence. The experimental males acquired none or only a few of the song patterns from the training tape and developed songs with aspects of normal syntax (sequential order of low- and high-frequency motif types) and temporal organization (more breaks between motifs at beginning than at end of song). These features are missing in the songs of males reared in complete acoustic isolation (Chaiken et al. 1993). Therefore, we conclude that European Starlings have a predetermined knowledge of some syntactical and temporal song features, but need an acoustic input from the environment to convert such information into a corresponding vocal output. The results show that acoustic patterns effective in stimulating such a development do not need to contain specific features of starling song. Received 14 June 1995, accepted 20 August 1995.