UCSF

Song tempo in male Bengalese finches is highly stereotyped within-bird but variable across the population, and is an important courtship signal that guides mate choice. Here, the value of song tempo for communicating other individual-specific behavioral traits was examined. The calling behavior of male Bengalese finches was examined by playing a distance call of a male conspecific through a speaker, and quantifying the bird’s call response latency and the number and frequency of call responses. Song tempo was found to be anticorrelated with call response latency, and positively correlated with both the percent of calls that were responded to and the number of call responses per trial. In females, who do not sing, calling behaviors in the call playback paradigm were not associated with the sire’s song tempo and no within-nest clustering of behavior was observed, suggesting that female calling behavior is not dependent on genetic background. However, there was strong within-bird clustering of call response features, such that females with low latency tended to produce many calls per trial and responded to most trials (and vice versa). In a separate set of experiments, electrophysiological data was recorded from the sensorimotor nucleus HVC while an adult male Bengalese finch listened to a variety of stimuli presented at different tempos. A tuning curve centered at a behaviorally-relevant tempo was identified. These findings suggest that song tempo may provide valuable information to potential mates about a suite of other behaviors, and the potential for individual-specific HVC dynamics to guide song learning and calling behaviors is discussed.