Duet Evolution Paper

Birdsong Lab undergraduates (!) Liam Mitchell and Jakica Cavar, collaborators Nadje Najar and Lauryn Benedict (University of Northern Colorado), and P.I. David Logue’s paper “The evolution of duetting and migration in wood-warblers” was accepted by The Auk. We used existing literature and a phylogenetic tree to reconstruct the evolution of duet song and migration in warblers. Our reconstruction suggested that the ancestor of all living warblers migrated, but did not duet.  Duetting evolved and migration was lost several times during the diversification of the warblers. As had been shown in other groups of birds, these two traits tended to evolved together: the evolution of duetting was associated with the loss of migration and vice versa. One interesting outcome of this study is that it indicates how long ago different lineages evolved duets. We hope to use this information to determine whether duets tends to evolve greater complexity over time.