The effects of age on vocal mimicry in female superb lyrebirds

The study of vocal mimicry in birds has been largely dominated by male-focused sexual selection theory. Despite this, females of many species demonstrate remarkable mimetic abilities that cannot be explained by these conventional male-centric frameworks. We analysed vocal recordings from nesting female superb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) to examine age-related patterns in mimetic behaviour during a female specific ecological context: nest defence. Our dataset includes annotations from the 10-minute recordings from individual females of known age, with a subset of six females recorded across multiple years. We classified vocal elements into three categories: mimicry of heterospecific sounds, conspecific vocalisations, and ambiguous elements which were assumed to be mimicry production errors. For mimetic elements, we identified the model species and sound type and categorised models as predators versus non-predators. We constructed repertoire accumulation curves to validate our 10-m..., , # **Read Me**

Paper title: The effect of age on vocal mimicry in female superb lyrebirds

Submitted Journal: Avian Biology DOI 10.1002/jav.03520

About: This file pertains to the data associated with the above paper. 

The master data for this project is “song_2025_final.csv”. All data and analysis derives from these data

Due to the length of code, there are five separate R files with analysis code. They and the associated data are labelled as follows:

1\. File One_The effect of age on vocal mimicry in female superb lyrebirds_female quality: data = 2025_Banding exposure summary data_final.csv

2\. File two_The effect of age on vocal mimicry in female superb lyrebirds_Repertoire accumulation curve: data = FSB_mim_final

3\. File three_The effect of age on vocal mimicry in female superb lyrebirds_Predators: data = song_2025_final.csv

4\. File four_The effect of age on mimicry in female superb lyrebirds_Mimicry and age: data = three_element_count_final.csv

5\. File five_The effect of ...,