[This was originally scheduled for 12th Feb, but was rescheduled]

Olga Feher will be giving a talk on  ”The development and evolution of song culture”. Tuesday 19th, 11am, DSB 1.17. Abstract below.

The development and evolution of song culture

Similarly to humans, songbirds learn their songs by imitating adult individuals and achieve complex vocal behaviour gradually during a sensitive phase in early development. Young birds raised in complete social and acoustic isolation produce abnormal songs. However, when we tutored young birds with these abnormal, isolate songs in an iterated learning experiment, the songs gradually acquired normal, wild-type characteristics. Next, to find the minimum requirements for the emergence of wild-type song culture, we tutored young birds with their own developing songs, removing any external song input. This experiment externalized the song feedback and is similar to iterating the song learning within a single generation. Young birds trained with their own songs in such a manner produced much more normal songs than their isolate brothers. Lastly, I will briefly talk about the development of syllable ordering in zebra finches which seems to share important features with other songbird species and human babies.

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