Song development and its importance in male and female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

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Song development and its importance in male and
female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

• Jodie Miller
• Phuoc Ho

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(No Transcript)
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• Two distinct sub-species of zebra finch
• Taeniopygia guttata guttata
• Taeniopygia gutatta castanotis
• medium sized finch
• 10-11 cm long
• weighing about 12 grams

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• male and female
• head and back are grey
• the tail has black and white bars
• social creatures
• live year round in flocks of 50 and up to 100 or
  more birds
• produce as many as 5 to 7 eggs

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• The young
• undergo a rapid development
• reaching nutritional independence at about 35
  days
• sexually mature at 3 months
• Monogamous and sexually dimorphic

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• Song system of zebra finches and other song birds
• two pathways
• Efferent pathway
• Anterior forebrain pathway

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Song learning and production regions

• HVC- caudal nucleus of the ventral hyperstriatum
• RA- robust nucleus of the archistriatum.
• DLM- medial nucleus of the dorsolateral thalamus
• lMAN- lateral magnocellualr nucleus of the
  anterior neostriatum.
• Area X- lobus parolfactorius
• nXIIts- tracheosyringeal portion of the
  hypoglossal nucleus

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Efferent pathway

• Production of learned song
• HVC ? RA ? nXIIts ? vocal organ

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Anterior forebrain pathway

• Song learning pathway
• HVC ? area X ? DLM ? lMAN ? RA

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Volume sizes

• lMAN, HVC, RA, area X

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lMAN

• initiation and early development of song
  learning
• males
• 10-20 days - increased 72
• 20-40 days decrease 48
• gt 40 days no change

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• Females
• Exhibit same patterns
• Males lMAN volume twice that of females at 10
  days
• 30 days - lMAN volume of males
• gt 30 days decrease until adulthood

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HVC

• Males
• Development until adulthood
• 10 -30 days increased 71
• 30 40 days further increased of 47
• 40 - 50 days growth stop
• 50 60 days increased 39
• gt 60 days constant

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• Females
• 10 days adulthood no volume growth detected

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RA

• volume similar during the first 20 days for males
  and females
• Males
• 20 - 30 days increase 48
• Every 10 days increase 22 until normal value
  is reached

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• Females
• 20 30 days decrease 23
• Continue to decrease until normal value is
  reached in adulthood

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Area X

• Visible in males
• Missing in females
• Occurred at two period
• 20 days increased 84
• 40 days further increased 76

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What does it indicate?

• Song learning consists of two phases
• Memorizing song (sensory acquisition phase)
• Reproducing song (sensorimotor learning phase)
• Memorizing phase started first
• Lasted up to 40 days
• Reproducing phase started later
• Lasted up to 60 days
• phases partly overlapping

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lMAN

• There is 10 days delay for females
• Related to only memorizing song
• Important to differentiate songs
• Males early development related to
  both the memorizing and reproducing song

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HVC RA

• Males
• HVC increase in two time periods increase
  continually in RA
• May related to memorizing phase started first
• May related to reproducing phase started later

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• Females
• Declined of HVC RA
• Occurred before reproducing phase has started
• Only memorizing phase occurred

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Song learning process

• Males
• -process takes place between 25-90 days of age
• -plays a crucial role in mate selection,
  developing the species or population specific
  vocalization.
• -exposure of songs can be acquired through social
  learning between non-relatives but is usually
  done by the father
• -must learn before sexual maturation for
  repertories to be stable

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Learning process cont

• Females
• Learn preferences for males by the males songs.
  Trait is passed on to the nestlings.
• vocalization developed independently from social
  learning because they do not sing.
• Provides a natural control group where perception
  learning is not influenced by song production
  learning
• Preferred songs like their fathers over an
  unfamiliar one.

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Distance Call structure

• Male call
• tonal component- made up of pure, sustained
  harmonic tones
• Noise component- harsh, rapidly-modulated quality
• Female Call
• Only tonal component- longer and lower pitched
• Males, not females learn distance calls from
  father during first 40 days of life

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Female Song preferences

• Songs heard early in life influence which song
  advertised by males they will choose to mate with
  in adulthood
• Need adult song exposure in early development to
  develop normal song preference
• Reared with adult malespreferred normal quality
  songs
• Reared without adult malespreferred abnormal
  quality song
• Prefer fathers song over unfamiliar ones
• Experiments conducted

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Stress effects on song structure

• Stress of song structure affects the
  attractiveness of the song.
• Stressed males exhibited shorter, simpler songs
• Nutrition stress effects
• brief period of under-nutrition affects the
  repertoire size (quantity of what is learned) and
  also the ability to copy local song material (the
  quality of what is learned).

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Stress effects Cont

• Study conducted on stress effects.
• The stressed males exhibited lower numbers of
  syllables and fewer different syllables in a
  phrase. Rate and frequency did not differ between
  two song types
• Females showed a significant preference for
  non-stressed songs
• Non-stressed males conducted a complex song.
  Complexity of a song may indicate that a male is
  older and therefore having a better territory.

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Other effects on song quality

• The number of male siblings cause social
  inhibition of song imitation among each other
• Study conducted by Tchernichovski
• Found that incomplete imitations are more common
  among early-hatched than among late-hatched
  siblings.
• Young siblings were more likely to develop song
  first and imitate entirely their fathers song
  than the older siblings.

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White noise effect

• Used chronic exposure to loud white noise
• Long-term exposure to continuous wn resulted in
  disruption of songs similar to that observed
  after deafening
• Recovery of pre-WN song patterns were limited
  after restoration of hearing.
• Suggested that an adult form of learning existed

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