10.5061/DRYAD.9NV3B
Janney, Eathan
Hunter College
Taylor, Hollis
Macquarie University
Scharff, Constance
Freie Universität Berlin
Rothenberg, David
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Parra, Lucas C.
City College of New York
Tchernichovski, Ofer
Hunter College
Data from: Temporal regularity increases with repertoire complexity in the
Australian pied butcherbird’s song
Dryad
dataset
2016
Cracticus nigrogularis picatus
music
Cracticus nigrogularis nigrogularis
2016-09-22T19:00:45Z
2016-09-22T19:00:45Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160357
5662569741 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Music maintains a characteristic balance between repetition and novelty.
Here, we report a similar balance in singing performances of free-living
Australian pied butcherbirds. Their songs include many phrase types. The
more phrase types in a bird's repertoire, the more diverse the
singing performance can be. However, without sufficient temporal
organization, avian listeners may find diverse singing performances
difficult to perceive and memorize. We tested for a correlation between
the complexity of song repertoire and the temporal regularity of singing
performance. We found that different phrase types often share motifs
(notes or stereotyped groups of notes). These shared motifs reappeared in
strikingly regular temporal intervals across different phrase types, over
hundreds of phrases produced without interruption by each bird. We
developed a statistical estimate to quantify the degree to which phrase
transition structure is optimized for maximizing the regularity of shared
motifs. We found that transition probabilities between phrase types tend
to maximize regularity in the repetition of shared motifs, but only in
birds of high repertoire complexity. Conversely, in birds of low
repertoire complexity, shared motifs were produced with less regularity.
The strong correlation between repertoire complexity and motif regularity
suggests that birds possess a mechanism that regulates the temporal
placement of shared motifs in a manner that takes repertoire complexity
into account. We discuss alternative musical, mechanistic and ecological
explanations to this effect.
Audio_Bird1Audio_Bird2Audio_Bird3Audio_Bird4Audio_Bird5Audio_Bird6Audio_Bird7Audio_Bird8Audio_Bird9Audio_Bird10Audio_Bird11Audio_Bird12Audio_Bird13Audio_Bird14Audio_Bird15Audio_Bird16Audio_Bird17
Australia