Urbanization alters the song propagation of two human-commensal songbird species: Active space, amplitude, and attenuation code

Urban expansion has increased pollution including both physical (e.g., exhaust, litter) and sensory (e.g., anthropogenic noise) components. Urban avian species tend to increase the frequency and/or amplitude of songs to reduce masking by low frequency noise. Nevertheless, song propagation to the receiver can also be constrained by the environment. We know relatively little about how this propagation may be altered across species that (1) vary in song complexity and (2) inhabit areas along an urbanization gradient. We investigated differences in song amplitude, attenuation, and active space, or the maximum distance a receiver can detect a signal, in two human-commensal species: the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus). We described urbanization both discretely and quantitatively to investigate the habitat characteristics most responsible for propagation changes. We found mixed support for our hypothesis of urban-specific degradation of songs. Urban son..., This data was collected for the manuscript titled \"Urbanization alters the song propagation of two human-commensal songbird species.\"
Data were originally .wav files collected during a propagation study. The .wav files were clipped so that each file contained a single exemplar with 0.1 seconds of silence before and after the exemplar. Each single-song .wav file was imported into Raven Pro to calculate active space using the \"batch correlator\" function. Within each site and exemplar, we cross correlated the song at 1m to the song at each consecutive distance. We also corss correlated the song at 1m to the background noise at each site. To determine active space from the cross correlations, we created a linear line of best fit between the cross correlation value and distance (5m-100m) for each stimulus. We then determined the distance that the regression line intersected with the background noise (a horizontal line over distance). We defined the distance of the intersection point as activ..., , # Urbanization alters the song propagation of two human-commensal songbird species: Active space, amplitude, and attenuation code

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q573n5tr5](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q573n5tr5)

This dataset contains the active space, amplitude, and attenuation data, and the SAS code used to analyze them using general linear mixed models to model the independent effects of urbanization, species, and song exemplar (within a species) on our dependent variables.

## Description of the data and file structure

The active space file and the amplitude/attenuation file are both in csv format.

For active space (AS_withPCA.csv), the \"Location\" column refers to the site name. The habitat type (i.e., urban, suburban, or rural) is listed in the \"Urban\" column. The PCA data (PC1, PC2, PC3, and PC4) is also listed for each site. In the \"Species\" column, HOFI refers to house finch and HOSP refers to house sparrow. The \"Exemplar\" column refers to the specific song exemplar (1-15 fo...