Abstract:
:Historically, bird song has been regarded as a sex-specific signalling trait; males sing to attract females and females drive the evolution of signal exaggeration by preferring males with ever more complex songs. This view provides no functional role for female song. Historic geographical research biases generalized pronounced sex differences of phylogenetically derived northern temperate zone songbirds to all songbirds. However, we now know that female song is common and that both sexes probably sang in the ancestor of modern songbirds. This calls for research on adaptive explanations and mechanisms regulating female song, and a reassessment of questions and approaches to identify selection pressures driving song elaboration in both sexes and subsequent loss of female song in some clades. In this short review and perspective we highlight newly emerging questions and propose a research framework to investigate female song and song sex differences across species. We encourage experimental tests of mechanism, ontogeny, and function integrated with comparative evolutionary analyses. Moreover, we discuss the wider implications of female bird song research for our understanding of male and female communication roles.
journal_name
Biol Lettjournal_title
Biology lettersauthors
Riebel K,Odom KJ,Langmore NE,Hall MLdoi
10.1098/rsbl.2019.0059subject
Has Abstractpub_date
2019-04-26 00:00:00pages
20190059issue
4eissn
1744-9561issn
1744-957Xjournal_volume
15pub_type
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