COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Complexity and Information in Avian Signals

Nowicki和Searcy博士建议测试早期营养是否会影响鸟类鸣唱的发展。 鸣禽鸣唱的发展和产生是由一系列明确的脑区控制的，这些脑区在孵化后的头两个月内发展得很大。 在许多物种中，歌唱的细节也是在这两个月的间隔中学会的。 Nowicki和Searcy假设，这一时期的营养会影响大脑中歌曲控制区域的发育，从而影响歌曲学习。 作为测试，他们将在孵化后的前三周内控制人工饲养麻雀的营养水平。 这些麻雀将接受录音带歌曲的辅导，这些鸟作为成年鸟发出的歌曲将被记录下来。 压力组和非压力组将在学习质量方面进行比较，即他们是否忠实地复制了导师歌曲的音符，以及学习的数量，即每个人学习了多少首歌曲。 两组人的大脑也将进行比较，包括歌曲控制区域的大小和这些区域的神经元密度。 最后，我们将比较有压力和没有压力的鸟类在完成生态相关任务时的表现。生命早期的压力会影响大脑发育，从而影响学习能力，这一观点适用于从鸟类到人类的各种生物。 鸣禽的鸣叫为研究这种效应提供了一个很好的模型系统，因为鸣禽行为的神经控制、发育和生态功能都是相对众所周知的。 这项研究将使用这个系统来增强我们对营养对复杂行为发展的影响的理解。

Drs. Nowicki and Searcy propose to test whether early nutrition affects the development of song in birds. Song development and production are controlled insongbirds by a series of well defined brain areas, which develop to a large extent during the first two months after hatching. In many species, the detailsof song are learned during this same two month interval. Nowicki and Searcy hypothesize that nutrition during this period affects the development of the song control regions in the brain and consequently affects song learning. As a test, they will manipulate level of nutrition in hand-reared sparrows during thefirst three weeks post-hatching. The sparrows will be tutored with tape-recorded songs, and the songs produced by these birds as adults will be recorded. The stressed and unstressed groups will be compared for the quality of learning, in terms of how faithfully they have copied the notes of the tutor songs, and for the quantity of learning, in terms of how many songs are learned per individual. The brains of the two groups will also be compared, for the size of the song control regions and the density of neurons in those regions. Finally, the songs of stressed and unstressed birds will be compared in terms ofhow well they function on ecologically relevant tasks.The idea that stress early in life affects brain development and hence learning ability is applicable to a wide variety of organisms, from birds to humans. Song in songbirds provides an excellent model system for studying such effects, in that the neural control, development, and ecological function of the behaviorare all relatively well known. The study will use this system to enhance our understanding of the effects of nutrition on the development of complex behaviors.