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Song development and its importance in male and female zebra finches ( Taeniopygia guttata) . Jodie Miller Phuoc Ho. Two distinct sub-species of zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata guttata Taeniopygia gutatta castanotis medium sized finch 10-11 cm long weighing about 12 grams.
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Song development and its importance in male and female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Jodie Miller Phuoc Ho
Two distinct sub-species of zebra finch • Taeniopygia guttata guttata • Taeniopygia gutatta castanotis • medium sized finch • 10-11 cm long • weighing about 12 grams
male and female • head and back are grey • the tail has black and white bars • social creatures • live year round in flocks of 50 and up to 100 or more birds • produce as many as 5 to 7 eggs
The young • undergo a rapid development • reaching nutritional independence at about 35 days • sexually mature at 3 months • Monogamous and sexually dimorphic
Song system of zebra finches and other song birds • two pathways • Efferent pathway • Anterior forebrain pathway
Song learning and production regions • HVC- caudal nucleus of the ventral hyperstriatum • RA- robust nucleus of the archistriatum. • DLM- medial nucleus of the dorsolateral thalamus • lMAN- lateral magnocellualr nucleus of the anterior neostriatum. • Area X- lobus parolfactorius • nXIIts- tracheosyringeal portion of the hypoglossal nucleus
Production of learned song HVC RA nXIIts vocal organ Efferent pathway
Song learning pathway HVC area X DLM lMAN RA Anterior forebrain pathway
Volume sizes • lMAN, HVC, RA, area X
lMAN • initiation and early development of song learning • males • 10-20 days - increased ~72% • 20-40 days – decrease ~ 48% • > 40 days – no change
Females • Exhibit same patterns • Males lMAN volume twice that of females at 10 days • 30 days - = lMAN volume of males • > 30 days – decrease until adulthood
HVC • Males • Development until adulthood • 10 -30 days – increased ~ 71% • 30 – 40 days – further increased of 47% • 40 - 50 days – growth stop • 50 – 60 days – increased 39% • > 60 days – constant
Females • 10 days – adulthood – no volume growth detected
RA • volume similar during the first 20 days for males and females • Males • 20 - 30 days – increase ~48% • Every 10 days – increase ~ 22% until normal value is reached
Females • 20 – 30 days – decrease 23% • Continue to decrease until normal value is reached in adulthood
Area X • Visible in males • Missing in females • Occurred at two period • 20 days – increased ~ 84% • 40 days – further increased ~ 76%
What does it indicate? • Song learning consists of two phases • Memorizing song (sensory acquisition phase) • Reproducing song (sensorimotor learning phase) • Memorizing phase started first • Lasted up to 40 days • Reproducing phase started later • Lasted up to 60 days • phases partly overlapping
lMAN • There is 10 days delay for females • Related to only memorizing song • Important to differentiate songs • Males early development related to both the memorizing and reproducing song
HVC & RA • Males • HVC increase in two time periods & increase continually in RA • May related to memorizing phase started first • May related to reproducing phase started later
Females • Declined of HVC & RA • Occurred before reproducing phase has started • Only memorizing phase occurred
Song learning process Males -process takes place between 25-90 days of age -plays a crucial role in mate selection, developing the species or population specific vocalization. -exposure of songs can be acquired through social learning between non-relatives but is usually done by the father -must learn before sexual maturation for repertories to be stable
Learning process con’t • Females • Learn preferences for males by the male’s songs. Trait is passed on to the nestlings. • vocalization developed independently from social learning because they do not sing. • Provides a natural control group where perception learning is not influenced by song production learning • Preferred songs like their father’s over an unfamiliar one.
Distance Call structure • Male call • tonal component- made up of pure, sustained harmonic tones • Noise component- harsh, rapidly-modulated quality • Female Call • Only tonal component- longer and lower pitched • Males, not females learn distance calls from father during first 40 days of life
Female Song preferences • Songs heard early in life influence which song advertised by males they will choose to mate with in adulthood • Need adult song exposure in early development to develop normal song preference • Reared with adult males=preferred normal quality songs • Reared without adult males=preferred abnormal quality song • Prefer fathers’ song over unfamiliar ones • Experiments conducted
Stress effects on song structure • Stress of song structure affects the attractiveness of the song. • Stressed males exhibited shorter, simpler songs • Nutrition stress effects • brief period of under-nutrition affects the repertoire size (quantity of what is learned) and also the ability to copy local song material (the quality of what is learned).
Stress effects Con’t • Study conducted on stress effects. • The stressed males exhibited lower numbers of syllables and fewer different syllables in a phrase. Rate and frequency did not differ between two song types • Females showed a significant preference for non-stressed songs • Non-stressed males conducted a complex song. Complexity of a song may indicate that a male is older and therefore having a better territory.
Other effects on song quality • The number of male siblings cause social inhibition of song imitation among each other • Study conducted by Tchernichovski • Found that incomplete imitations are more common among early-hatched than among late-hatched siblings. • Young siblings were more likely to develop song first and imitate entirely their fathers song than the older siblings.
White noise effect • Used chronic exposure to loud white noise • Long-term exposure to continuous wn resulted in disruption of songs similar to that observed after deafening • Recovery of pre-WN song patterns were limited after restoration of hearing. • Suggested that an adult form of learning existed
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