New collaborative paper on song type sequences in Animal Behaviour

David is a co-author on a new paper out in Animal Behaviour.  Lead author Richard Hedley (University of Alberta) developed a statistical approach to identify “preferred” song type transitions in individual birds, and test the degree to which preferences are shared among individuals. David, Lauryn Benedict (University of Northern Colorado), and Dan Mennill (University of Windsor) helped with the methods and writing, and contributed song type sequences from their respective study species. Richard’s species, Cassin’s Vireo, shared preferred transitions at a high rate, but the other three species shared at much lower rates, showing that rates of song type transition sharing (and presumably, the mechanisms by which transitions are learned) vary among species. 

Hedley, R. W., Logue, D. M., Benedict, L., & Mennill, D. J. (2018). Assessing the similarity of song-type transitions among birds: evidence for interspecies variation. Animal Behaviour, 140, 161-170.