Evolution of female song and duetting in the chaffinch (Fringilla) species complex

Female song is ancestral to songbirds and shows considerable phylogenetic signal, but its presence also appears to be labile and correlated with life-history and ecology. While previous studies have examined the evolution of female song across species-rich families, here we studied female song in island populations of a recently diverged species-complex, the chaffinches (genus Fringilla). We show this behaviour has recently evolved in these populations, and probably on two independent occasions. In F. teydea, female song is performed in loose duets with males, while in F. coelebs, female song is produced solo. Populations with singing females showed year-round territoriality and were found in regions with low seasonality – both factors previously connected with high rates of female singing. To determine the relative saliency of female songs to conspecifics, and the degree to which they instigate territorial defence behaviours, we performed a series of speaker playback experiments. In F...., This is the data repository for the 2023 paper: Evolution of female song and duetting in the chaffinch (Fringilla) species complex.
Data were collected between February 2016 – May 2018. 
 
##### Acoustic Analysis ######
The Luscinia database (Dryad_JAB_Female) containing the recordings used in the bioacoustics analysis. Luscinia is an open-source biaocoustics software freely available, here:
https://github.com/rflachlan/Luscinia/releases:
 
To read the database following Luscinia installation, create a folder named JAB_female_Fringilla.luscdb, and place the JAB_female_Fringilla.h2.db file in it. 
Next open Luscinia, and locate the Folder. Press the log in button (without changing username or adding password) and you should be able to access the database.
 
The Luscinia database contains the song recordings used for the analysis. Follow instructions found here: https://rflachlan.github.io/Luscinia/ to derive the acoustic properties of each song. 
The acoustic measures for the exemplar so..., R & R Studio
LusciniaÂ