Communication in Birds
Introduction:
Understanding communication in animals is very important to know an animal’s niche within theirpopulation and communities. Communication can be seen in the songs of birds, the chirps of crickets or the visual communication seen in fish species. Moreover, communication signals are vitally important to understanding how these behaviors are gained through proximate causes of behavior. There are ultimate causes in communication as even communication has a genetic basis acquired over time through family lineage. Both proximate and ultimate causes can be broken down into two parts, the developmental component and the pattern of historical changes (evolution) and thus the origin of the trait as it has adapted for a species over time. Proximate and ultimate causes of communication in all animals are complementary. There are processes that make the organism capable of performing a type of communication (physiologically). This mechanism is the basis for behavior and thus has an evolutionary component. Essentially, communication on any level is defined as an exchange of information fromone organism to another that results in a change in behavior.
The purpose of this lab is to have you select an organism that you can see and hear and thus study thecommunication of it in finding both the proximate and ultimate causes of the communication as a function of it’s behavior.
(selection of birds and their songs, but not always distinguished between male/female, mating, territory, etc.)
(click on the birds and then read about the RESEARCH and listen to the song of specific birds)
(interesting article about rehabilitation in birds and the lack of learning a song….VERY much worth the read)
(wolf spider communication)
(limited list of Nebraska wildlife, but a good start)
(good source of animals and some of their communications)
Procedure:
1. Click into the web-link for bird song research and check out the research done on bird speciescommunication. You may need to do some of your own searching online for these answers as the original website for song research is not longer active.
2. Listen to at least ANY THREE bird calls of different species of birds and answer the following questions using both the web sight and chapter 2 and 9 of your book. When you get to the page of the bird you are looking at, you have to click on the spectrogram to hear the song. Scroll all the way down to get all the information you need on the bird and their song behavior.
a.) How can you tell a difference between the bird songs of different species of birds?
b.) Do males or females sing more frequently? Why?
c.) Explain what a dialect is and how one species of birds can have several dialects? Why are different dialects important?
d.) How does the environment affect the bird song in each of your three bird species?
e.) Does the birds of each of your species acquire their song through social interaction with their peers? If so how, if not, why not?
f.) Is there an adaptationist approach to either of your bird species?
g.) Some birds that are of different species have song that sounds the same. This is called convergent behavior. Give an example of this found on the web sight and explain why this might be important for these organisms.
3. Next you will select a Nebraska Animal to research. When you are ready to find out what your animal sounds like you will have to go to “Google” as a search engine and enter the whole name of your organism + communication (or sounds) and the search engine will give you some good links of places to go to study the communication and hear sounds of your organism
a) Which organism did you select?
b.) What modes of communication does your organism’s species have (sight, gestures, language, song, pheromones, etc.)?
c.) How is the communication developed from it’s young age to older ages?
d.) How does this organism acquire it’s communication? Is it learned through environmental interaction, through peer interaction, through social interaction, through gene interaction, etc?
e.) Are there other organisms that have the same type (sound, gesture, tactile, phenomenal, etc.) of
communication? If so, what organisms? Why do you think the communication has evolved the same for both organisms?
f.) Are there alternate dialects in the communication of your organism? If not, why not?