Long-term playback devices and automated digital recorders to study vocal learning and animal communication by four collaborative research groups

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Vocal learning, the process where young animals learn sounds by listening to the vocalizations of adults, has evolved in six groups of animals, most notably in humans and songbirds. Songbirds provide a compelling system for studying vocal learning because they mature quickly, their learning environment can be manipulated experimentally, and their learned songs are particularly important to their reproductive activities as adults. Whereas most research on song learning has involved laboratory studies, we have developed innovative field-based technologies for studying vocal learning in wild populations. We request NSERC support for two new field-based technologies to study song learning and song function. (1) A mobile loudspeaker cluster consisting of 40 programmable digital playback devices that simulate the voices of 40 interactive adult songbirds. (2) An array of autonomous digital recorders that can document the behaviour of birds before, during, and after experimental manipulations at the population level. Both components are rugged, weatherproof, and capable of deployments lasting weeks to months, a timescale appropriate to the song learning process. This equipment will facilitate a series of groundbreaking studies by the four co-applicants at three different Ontario universities, directly involving 4 PDFs, 8 PhD, 4 MSc, and 50 BSc students over the next decade. The first project involves experimental introduction of novel songs to an island population of sparrows with unusually high site philopatry; we will use playback to simulate different types of song tutors and we will use the recorders to evaluate what experimental songs are learned when birds return from migration. We will thereby conduct the first field-based experiment on cultural evolution in a wild animal population. The second project involves experimental simulation of interactive male and female tutors in duetting tropical wrens, to conduct the first experiment on female and duet song learning. Five additional projects involve speaker occupation experiments to study the function of singing styles in temperate birds, the function of vocal duets in tropical birds, and the importance of male density in lekking birds and frogs.