Communication and social networks in songbirds

Our aim has been to understand how long range signals are used and function in spatial and mating decisions within a larger neighbourhood. These ideas are currently embedded in the zebra finch project and also are being applied to a cooperative project on white-browed sparrow weavers.

The project involved many year of integrating acoustic communication, vocal interactions, and spatial behaviour (radio-tracking) (review in: Naguib et al. 2011; Snijders and Naguib 2017).

Some recent examples here are studies on male song, territorial behaviour, and social networks (Amy et al 2010, Snijders et al 2014, 2015, Naguib et al 2016, Bircher et al 2020, 2021) and on effects of noise pollution on parental care (Naguib et al. 2013). For instance, we have been determining spatial behaviour and social encounters in descriptive and experimental contexts using regular radio-tracking (e.g. Naguib et al 2001, Amrhein et al 2004, Roth et al 2007) and more recently state of the art automated tracking techniques (Encounternet) and link these to communication networks (e.g. Snijders et al 2014, 2017; Bircher et al 2020, 2021).

These latter studies led to the largest radio-tracking study on songbirds with millions of location logs of movements across the neighbourhood. It also allowed us to unravel personality-dependent differences in spatial and social behaviour in a social and communication network and to determine fitness correlates.

Currently we are mainly analyzing the wealth of data collected in this project.