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Soft song is a reliable signal of aggressive intent in song sparrows

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Abstract

Animals frequently use signals to modulate aggressive interactions. Establishing that a signal is aggressive or threatening requires demonstrating that it is more commonly used in agonistic contexts, that it predicts subsequent aggressive behaviors by the sender, and that receivers respond differently to this signal. Like many birds, song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) produce a low-amplitude “soft song” vocalization that has been hypothesized to be an aggressive signal. Soft song meets the first two criteria, but previous research has failed to demonstrate that soft song provokes aggression or that receivers even perceive soft song differently from normal loud song. We used a playback experiment with taxidermic mount presentation to test whether territorial male song sparrows respond differently to loud and soft song playbacks. Subjects reacted more strongly to the soft song playback by approaching the mount more closely, increasing wing wave displays, and increasing the proportion of their own songs that were soft songs, with further trends toward increasing the number of flights and attacks. These results confirm that soft song is a conventional signal of aggression in song sparrows and that increased receiver retaliation maintains its reliability.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Sievert Rohwer, Kevin Epperly, Rob Faucett, Dan Froehlich, Annie Kidder, Eugene Makela, and the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture helped with the mounts. This manuscript benefited from the comments from Henrik Brumm and an anonymous reviewer. We thank Discovery Park and its staff for hosting our research.

Ethical standards

All work conforms to the ABS/ASAB Guidelines for the Treatment of Animals in Behavioural Research and Teaching and was approved by the University of Washington Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Animal Research Protocol 2207–03, approved on 23 April 2009).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98105, USA

    Christopher N. Templeton, S. Elizabeth Campbell & Michael D. Beecher

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98105, USA

    Çağlar Akçay, S. Elizabeth Campbell & Michael D. Beecher

  3. School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9TS, UK

    Christopher N. Templeton

  4. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14850, USA

    Çağlar Akçay

Authors
  1. Christopher N. Templeton
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  2. Çağlar Akçay
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  3. S. Elizabeth Campbell
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  4. Michael D. Beecher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher N. Templeton.

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Communicated by H. Brumm

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Templeton, C.N., Akçay, Ç., Campbell, S.E. et al. Soft song is a reliable signal of aggressive intent in song sparrows. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66, 1503–1509 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-012-1405-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-012-1405-5

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