Tuning towards tomorrow? Common nightingales Luscinia megarhynchos change and increase their song repertoires from the first to the second breeding season

Abstract

In many oscines, song repertoire size correlates with male quality and female mate choice, and can vary with age. In a cross‐sectional field study in common nightingales Luscinia megarhynchos, one y old birds had substantially smaller repertoires than did older ones. In laboratory experiments males can acquire new song types during this period. This longitudinal field study therefore investigates whether individual nightingales increase their repertoires from the first to the second breeding season. We report a striking repertoire turnover, with an average overall increase of 24% of the first season's repertoire, resulting from added and dropped song types (54% and 30%, respectively). The number of added song types correlated positively with the size of the first season's repertoire. These results are consistent with the notion that repertoire size in nightingales correlates with male quality, although the overlap between repertoire sizes of first and second season birds makes it impossible to discriminate age based solely on repertoire size. Comparing the number of song types an individual sang in both seasons (‘permanent song types’) revealed a lower overlap than reported for subsequent seasons. The frequencies with which these were sung in the first season were less predictive of how often they were sung in the second season than was the case between later years. This drastic repertoire turnover from the first to the second season may be a selective process in response to the local song types, constrained by genetic makeup and shaped by early experience.