Data from: Individual recognition of opposite sex vocalizations in the zebra finch

Individual vocal recognition plays an important role in the social lives of many vocally active species. In group-living songbirds the most common vocalizations during communal interactions are low-intensity, soft, unlearned calls. Being able to tell individuals apart solely from a short call would allow a sender to choose a specific group member to address, resulting in the possibility to form complex communication networks. However, little research has yet been carried out to discover whether soft calls contain individual identity. In this study, males and females of zebra finch pairs were tested with six vocalization types - four different soft calls, the distance call and the male song - to investigate whether they are able to distinguish individuals of the opposite sex. For both sexes, we provide the first evidence of individual vocal recognition for a zebra finch soft unlearned call. Moreover, while controlling for habituation and testing for repeatability of the findings, we quantify the effects of hitherto little studied variables such as partners’ vocal exchange previous to the experiment, spectral content of playback calls and quality of the answers. We suggest that zebra finches can recognize individuals via soft vocalizations, therefore allowing complex directed communication within vocalizing flocks.

个体鸣声识别在诸多发声活跃物种的社会生活中发挥着关键作用。对于群居鸣禽而言，群体互动期间最常见的发声类型为低强度、轻柔且非习得性鸣叫声。若仅通过一段短鸣叫声便可区分不同个体，便能让发声者精准选择特定群体成员进行交流，进而有望构建复杂的通信网络。然而，目前针对轻柔鸣叫声是否携带个体识别信息的相关研究仍较为匮乏。本研究以配对斑胸草雀（zebra finch）的雌雄个体为实验对象，选取六种发声类型开展测试——包括四种不同的轻柔鸣叫声、距离叫声以及雄性鸣唱——旨在探究它们能否区分异性个体。本研究首次为斑胸草雀的非习得性轻柔鸣叫声具备个体鸣声识别能力提供了实证支持，且该结论适用于雌雄两性。此外，在控制习惯化效应并检验研究结果可重复性的基础上，我们还量化了此前极少被关注的变量所产生的影响，包括实验前配对个体间的声学交流、回放叫声的频谱特征以及应答叫声的质量。本研究结果表明，斑胸草雀可通过轻柔发声实现个体识别，这为鸣禽种群内开展复杂的定向交流提供了可行路径。