Data from: Early development of vocal interaction rules in a duetting songbird

Exchange of vocal signals is an important aspect of animal communication. Although birdsong is the premier model for understanding vocal development, the development of vocal interaction rules in birds and possible parallels to humans have been little studied. Many tropical songbirds engage in complex engage in vocal interactions in the form of duets between mated pairs. In some species duets show precise temporal coordination and follow rules (duet codes) governing which song type one bird uses to reply to each of the song types of its mate. We determined whether these duetting rules are acquired during early development in canebrake wrens. Results show that juveniles acquire a duet code by singing with a mated pair of adults and that juveniles gradually increase their fidelity to the code over time. Additionally, we found that juveniles exhibit poorer temporal coordination than adults and improve their coordination as time progresses. Human turn-taking, an analogous rule to temporal coordination, is learned during early development. We report that the ontogeny of vocal interaction rules in songbirds is analogous to that of human conversation rules.发声信号的交换是动物交流的重要组成部分。尽管鸟鸣是研究发声发育的经典模型，学界对鸟类发声交互规则的发育及其与人类的潜在相似性却鲜有研究。许多热带鸣禽会通过配对个体间的二重唱开展复杂的发声交互行为。部分物种的二重唱具备精准的时序协调性，并遵循特定规则（二重唱编码，duet codes），该规则明确了个体应如何针对配偶的每种鸣唱类型做出应答。本研究以灌丛鹪鹩（canebrake wren）为研究对象，探究这类二重唱规则是否在其早期发育阶段习得。研究结果显示，幼鸟可通过与成年配对个体一同鸣唱来掌握二重唱编码，且随着时间推移，其对编码的遵循度会逐步提升。此外，我们发现幼鸟的时序协调性弱于成鸟，且随成长逐步改善协调能力。与时序协调性类似的人类对话轮流规则，正是在早期发育阶段习得的。本研究表明，鸣禽发声交互规则的个体发育过程与人类对话规则的发育过程高度相似。