Bluebirds

1191 Words5 Pages
Can Bluebirds Recognize The Songs Of Their Kin? Emily Marrs The topic I chose was songbirds, more specifically the Western Bluebird (Sialia mexicana). I will be reviewing an article examining vocal kin recognition in kin neighborhoods of western bluebirds. Kin-directed helping is a well-known concept within birds. These interactions between kin can include “incest avoidance, cooperative breeding, help defending the nest” and more (Akcay et al. 2013). However, at the time this article was published little was known about the method of recognition of kin songs. Put more simply, scientists were aware of the connections birds had to their kin, but wanted to know more about if these birds were able to distinguish the songs of their family members…show more content…
2013). The trials were conducted within the first three days of the nesting cycle to ensure the standardization of playback locations and the stage in the nesting cycle among all male subjects. The stimulus tapes of the songs were recorded 20-30 minutes before dawn or immediately after dawn, the time interval in which the bluebirds sing most vigorously. During this predawn time songs are typically associated with an intruder male entering another bird’s territory or situations where a female leaves the territory for another close by territory. The bluebirds were presented with recordings of both kin and non-kin birds living in other territories and the recordings were played near their nests on two consecutive days. In an attempt to avoid bias, the trials were carried out in a double blind method in which a third party not involved in the experiment renamed the song recordings and reorganized the trial order in attempt to disguise which recording was being used during playback. A speaker was hung from a branch 5 meters from the nest. The speaker was connected to an iPod with a long cable so that the song recordings could be initiated from a distance.…show more content…
Males tended to show an increase in following their mates in response to non-relative songs, but this finding was not statistically significant. These results confirm the earlier hypothesis that male bluebirds will act more aggressive towards the songs of non-kin birds than the songs of male relatives, suggesting that Sialia mexicana can recognize relatives based on vocalizations. This study adds to the data from similar studies in which “researchers have found that vocalizations serving as kin recognition cues contain a family signature so that vocalizations of relatives are more similar to each other than to vocalizations of nonrelatives” (Akcay et al. 2013). This experimental study did not determine if kin songs contained a “family signature or if the songs were learned or genetically acquired,” but based off of other similar experiments the author seems to conclude that kin songs do indeed have a family signature that is
Open Document