common/oscine

The respective influence of testosterone and estradiol on the structure of the Common Canary Serinus canaria song was studied by experimentally controlling blood levels of steroid hormones in males and analyzing the consequent effects on acoustic parameters. A detailed acoustic analysis of the songs

The vocal organ, or syrinx, of oscine birds has two parts, each of which has generally been presumed to operate independently of the other. A significant counter-example is now demonstrated in the production of a common vocalization by the black-capped chickadee (Parus atricapillus), in which the

Songbirds share a number of parallels with humans that make them an attractive model system for studying the behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the learning and processing of vocal communication signals. Here we review the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms of audition in

An effective way to understand the genomics of divergence in non-model organisms is to use the transcriptome to identify genes associated with divergence. We examine the transcriptome of the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) and contrast it with the avian models zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) and

The song of oscines provides an extensively studied model of age-dependent behaviour changes. Male and female receivers might use song characteristics to obtain information about the age of a signaller, which is often related to its quality. Whereas most of the age-dependent song changes have been

The vocal control system of oscine songbirds has some perplexing properties--e.g. laterality, adult neurogenesis, neuronal replacement--that are not predicted by common views of how vocal learning takes place. Similarly, we do not understand the relation between the direct pathway for the control of

The songs of oscine passerine birds vary on many spatial scales, reflecting the actions of diverse evolutionary pressures. Here we examine the songs of Cisticola erythrops, which effectively signal species identity across a geographical area spanning 6500 km in sub-Saharan Africa. Selection for

The brain nuclei and pathways comprising the song system of oscine songbirds bear many similarities with circuits in other bird species and in mammals. This suggests that the song system evolved as a specialization of pre-existing circuits and may retain fundamental properties in common with those

The syrinx of oscine birds ("true songbirds") is a double vocal organ, and each side has generally been presumed to function independently under separate neural control during phonation. A significant counterexample is demonstrated here in the production of a common vocalization by the black-capped

UNASSIGNED Passeriformes ("perching birds" or passerines) make up more than half of all extant bird species. The genome of the zebra finch, a passerine model organism for vocal learning, was noted previously to contain thousands of short interspersed elements (SINEs), a group of retroposons that is

A common result in recent linguistic studies on word association networks is that their topology can often be described by Zipf's law, in which most words have few associations, whereas a few words are highly connected. However, little is known about syntactic networks in more rudimentary

The song system of oscine birds has become a versatile model system that is used to study diverse problems in neurobiology. Because the song system is often studied with the intention of applying the results to mammalian systems, it is important to place song system brain nuclei in a broader context

In common with human speech, song is culturally inherited in oscine passerine birds ('songbirds'). Intraspecific divergence in birdsong, such as development of local dialects, might be an important early step in the speciation process. It is therefore vital to understand how songs diverge,

Vocal learning is an important behavior in oscines (songbirds). Some songbird species learn heterospecific sounds as well as conspecific vocalizations. The emergence of vocal mimicry is necessarily tied to the evolution of vocal learning, as mimicry requires the ability to acquire sounds through

Vocal learning through imitation underlies both human speech acquisition and song acquisition in oscine birds; both processes depend on auditory information. In songbirds, a specialized forebrain pathway is responsible for producing the learned temporal and acoustic features of vocalizations, and