Female song is widespread and ancestral in songbirds

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 3379
• Main Authors: Odom, Karan J., Hall, Michelle L., Riebel, Katharina, Omland, Kevin E., Langmore, Naomi E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 04-03-2014; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/181/2470; Animals; Female; Humanities and Social Sciences; Male; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Songbirds - physiology; Vocalization, Animal - physiology
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4379

Bird song has historically been considered an almost exclusively male trait, an observation fundamental to the formulation of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Like other male ornaments, song is used by male songbirds to attract females and compete with rivals. Thus, bird song has become a textbook example of the power of sexual selection to lead to extreme neurological and behavioural sex differences. Here we present an extensive survey and ancestral state reconstruction of female song across songbirds showing that female song is present in 71% of surveyed species including 32 families, and that females sang in the common ancestor of modern songbirds. Our results reverse classical assumptions about the evolution of song and sex differences in birds. The challenge now is to identify whether sexual selection alone or broader processes, such as social or natural selection, best explain the evolution of elaborate traits in both sexes.
Bird song is commonly seen as a male trait that plays a role in female attraction, but its origin and prevalence in females are unknown. Here, Odom
et al.
show that female song is widespread and that it was present in the common ancestor of modern songbirds.