Social experiences shape song preference learning independent of developmental exposure to song

Communication governs the formation and maintenance of social relationships. The interpretation of communication signals depends not only on the signal’s content, but also on a receiver’s individual experience. Experiences throughout life may interact to affect behavioral plasticity, such that a lack of developmental sensory exposure could constrain adult learning, while salient adult social experiences could remedy developmental deficits. We investigated how experiences impact the formation and direction of female auditory preferences in the zebra finch. Zebra finches form long-lasting pair bonds and females learn preferences for their mate’s vocalizations. We found that after two weeks of cohabitation with a male, females formed pair bonds and learned to prefer their partner’s song regardless of whether they were reared with (“normally-reared”) or without (“song-naïve”) developmental exposure to song. In contrast, females that heard but did not physically interact with a male did not ..., Animals. All zebra finches (n=86 females and 24 males, average 9 months old, range 3-26 months) were maintained on a 14:10 light:dark cycle, given ad libitum access to seed, grit, and water, and weekly supplements (e.g. lettuce, egg). We raised females in one of two conditions. One set of females (‘normally-reared’) was raised to 60 days post hatch in a cage with both parents and siblings. A second set of females (‘song-naïve’) were raised in sound-attenuating chambers (‘soundboxes’; TRA Acoustics, Cornwall, Ontario) with only the mother and siblings. Specifically, fathers were removed within five to seven days post-hatch, prior to the period when females memorize the father’s song [1] and male siblings were removed at 30-40 days post-hatch, prior to producing stereotyped song [2]. After 60 days, normally-reared-females were housed either in same-sex group cages in our mixed-sex colony (n=23) or in same-sex group cages in an all-female colony (n=21), and song-naïve females (n=38) were h..., , # Social experiences shape song preference learning independent of developmental exposure to song

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ghx3ffbtt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ghx3ffbtt)

In this study, we examined social behavior and auditory preferences in zebra finches. In the Pair Bonding dataset, we quantified the amount of time male-female cohabitating pairs spent on a variety of behaviors as a percent of time out of two hours at three timepoints (see methods). In the Preference dataset, we quantified the number of times females triggered the playback of male song in an active choice assay (pulls for Stimulus A and pulls for Stimulus B) on three test categories and calculated a normalized metric of preference strength.

## Description of the data and file structure

**Pair Bonding Data Structure:**

*Pair:* identification codes (leg band color and numbers) for the male and female recorded during two-weeks of cohabitation

*Female ID:* identification code for the opposite-sex paired (OS...