Publications

Most vocal learning species exhibit an early critical period during which their vocal control neural circuitry facilitates the …

In species with biparental care, coordination of parental activities can have important fitness consequences. However, specific …

Many group-living animals coordinate social behaviours using contact calls, which can be produced for all group members or targeted at …

Animal acoustic signals are shaped by selection to convey information based on their tempo, intensity, and frequency. However, sound …

Vocal dialects are a taxonomically widespread phenomenon which are typically only studied in a portion of a species’ range. Thus, it is …

Animal acoustic signals are widely used in diverse research areas due to the relative ease with which sounds can be registered across a …

Traditionally, foraging behavior has been explained as the response to a trade-off between energetic gain from feeding resources and …

In some species, the ability to acquire new vocalizations persists into adult- hood and may be an important mediator of social …

The ability of an animal to detect environmental cues is crucial for its survival and fitness. In bats, sound certainly plays a …

Traits that exhibit differences between the sexes have been of special interest in the study of phenotypic evolution. Classic …

Roosts are vital for the survival of many species, and how individuals choose one site over another is affected by various factors. In …

Song plays a crucial role in bird ecology and behavior, and understanding the processes that alter the production and transmission of …

Assessing diversity of discretely varying behaviour is a classical ethological problem. In particular, the challenge of calculating an …

Historically, bird song complexity was thought to evolve primarily through sexual selection on males; yet, in many species, both sexes …

Animals produce a wide array of sounds with highly variable acoustic structures. It is possible to understand the causes and …

Many animals produce coordinated signals, but few are more striking than the elaborate male–female vocal duets produced by some …

Vocal signals mediate social relationships, and among networks of territorial animals, information is often shared via broadcast …

We investigated the ontogenetic changes of two call types, the inquiry call and the response call, whichcomprise an interactive …

Despite longstanding interest in the evolutionary origins and maintenance of vocal learning, we know relatively little about how social …

Vocal learning, in which animals modify their vocalizations based on social experience, has evolved in several lineages of mammals and …

Cognitive abilities are pivotal to the performance of traits that are closely related to fitness. However, the selective regimes …

An increasing number of studies report coordinated chick provisioning by avian parents. Although the pattern of parental coordination …

The study of animal acoustic signals is a central tool for many fields in ecology and evolution, but the diversity of analytical …

Advanced cognitive abilities have long been hypothesized to be important in mating. Yet, most work on sexual selection has focused on …

Pair collaborative behavior may play an important role in avian reproduction. However, evidence for this mainly comes from certain …

Exchange of vocal signals is an important aspect of animal communication. Although birdsong is the premier model for understanding …

Animal acoustic communication is one of the most fruitful research areas in behavioural and evolutionary biology. Work in this area …

When using signals to attract mates or defend resources, animals often overlap the voices of other in-dividuals in close proximity. In …

Although song development in songbirds has been much studied as an analogue of language development in humans, the development of vocal …

We use allometric analysis to explore how acoustic signals scale on individual body size and to test hypotheses about the factors …

Learning has been traditionally thought to accelerate the evolutionary change of behavioural traits. We evaluated the evolutionary rate …

One way in which secondary sexual traits can influence differential reproductive success is by playing a key role in …

In the context of global change the possible loss of biodiversity has been identified as a major concern. Biodiversity could be …

We present an interdisciplinary effort to record feeding behaviors and control the diet of a hummingbird species (Phaethornis …

Vocal learning in birds is typically restricted to a sensitive period early inlife, with the few exceptions reported in songbirds and …

Predator-prey interactions occur regularly in nature; however, predation events are difficult to observe in the canopy of tropical rain …

The nightingale, the lark ascending; the cuckoo, the dawn chorus; since ancient times man has found beauty in birdsong. It appeals to …

Signals in animal communication are commonly judged as aesthetically appealing by human standards. This is particularly common for …