Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 112, February 2016, Pages 285-300
Animal Behaviour

Waltzing Taeniopygia: integration of courtship song and dance in the domesticated Australian zebra finch

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.11.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Three operationally defined body movements occur at a greater rate within song.

  • Body movements cluster mostly at the beginning and end of song motifs.

  • Beak wipes, one of the defined movements, are performed faster during song.

  • Movement rates during song were correlated with those outside the song context.

  • The data suggest a choreography of song and dance that signals courtship intensity.

Multimodal signalling can improve or maximize information exchange. A challenge is to show that two independent signals, such as vocalizations and visual displays, are deliberately coordinated. Male zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, signal visually and acoustically during courtship, performing a stereotyped dance while singing. The male approaches the female hopping in a zig-zag pattern, turning his body axis, and wiping his beak repeatedly on or above the perch. The only previous quantitative study of song and dance choreography in zebra finches revealed that the distribution of all movements during song was not strongly patterned across birds but very similar in fathers and sons. This raises the possibility that particular movements may follow a choreography. Here we report that three operationally defined dance movements, ‘beak wipe’ (BA), ‘turn-around’ (TA) and ‘hop’, occurred with different frequencies and speed during singing than during silence. BW, TA and hops clustered significantly at the start and end of song bouts and were arranged in a nonrandom fashion. In addition, BW, but not TA, were performed faster during song than nonsong. Finally, hops coincided significantly more often than expected by chance with particular notes. Together, these results suggest that male zebra finches integrate their song and dance during courtship. This may help females to identify courting males in a noisy environment and evaluate the intensity and quality of the courtship performance. Our results underscore that the choreography of movement gestures with learned vocalizations, such as hand gestures accompanying speech, is a further parallel between human and avian signalling. They invite future investigations into the underlying neural mechanisms and consequences for mate choice.

Section snippets

Subjects

A total of 20 captive-bred male zebra finches (9–45 months old) participated in three variations of the experimental set-up, seven in 2010 (experiment A), four in 2011 (B) and 10 in 2013 (C). One male was tested twice (2010, 2011) and his data were averaged. Before experiment A male birds were housed in groups of seven males for several months. Birds were transferred from large aviaries into smaller group cages 1 week before experiments B and C. Experiment B was performed in May outdoors, and

Results

Courtship song and dance was elicited by allowing visual and acoustic but no physical contact between a female and the focal male. The behaviour of the male was audio and video recorded for 5 min. For the video analysis we divided beak wipe (BW) and turn-around movements (TA) into a preparation phase, stroke and poststroke phase (Fig. A1). Hop movements were scored as point events (Fig. A1). To investigate whether hops, BW and TA were coordinated with song, we quantified occurrences and timing

Discussion

Here we comprehensively show for the first time multiple ways in which the expression of dance is strongly, but not obligatorily, associated with the expression of song in zebra finches. Stereotypic movements, that is, BW, TA and hops, occurred significantly more during song than during silence. All three movements clustered at the start and end of motifs and hops coincided with notes, particularly the introductory but also the first and last motif notes. BW were performed faster during song

Acknowledgments

We thank F. Nottebohm, H. Hultsch and H. Williams and two anonymous referees for critical comments on the manuscript. We are indebted to M. Weiss for statistical support. For assistance with the video recordings, we thank M. Kloß and M. Gessinger. Also thanks to excellent bird care by Janett Birkenfeld. We acknowledge the support of a consortium grant of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; ‘Varying Tunes’, 01 GQ 0963) as well as a grant from SFB 665: Developmental

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