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Operant discrimination of relative frequency ratios in black-capped chickadee song

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Abstract

The two-note fee bee song of the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is sung at many different absolute frequencies, but the relative frequencies, or “pitch ratios”, between the start and end of the fee note (glissando) and the fee and the bee notes (inter-note interval) are preserved with each pitch-shift. Ability to perceive these ratios and their relative salience varies with sex of the bird and setting: while both sexes appear to perceive changes in the inter-note interval, males appear to attend to the glissando in the field, and females appear to attend to both ratios. In this study, we compared directly whether male and female chickadees could discriminate between normal fee bee songs and songs that had one or both of the pitch ratios altered, and whether birds attended to one type of alteration over another. Both sexes learned to discriminate normal from altered songs; songs lacking an inter-note interval were more easily discriminated than songs with only the glissando removed. Females performed slightly better than males, including in the most difficult task with the stimuli lacking the glissando. Our study illustrates the value of using perceptual tasks to directly compare performance between the sexes and to demonstrate the difference between perception of and attention to acoustic features of vocal communication.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to all private property owners in the Halifax region who allowed us to capture birds and to Sean Aitken and Jordan Fisk for helping collect data.

Funding

This research was supported by NSERC DG 326869-2012 to LSP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, P.O. Box 15000, 1355 Oxford St, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada

    Sean P. Roach & Leslie S. Phillmore

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4, Canada

    Daniel J. Mennill

Authors
  1. Sean P. Roach
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  2. Daniel J. Mennill
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  3. Leslie S. Phillmore
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Correspondence to Leslie S. Phillmore.

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All authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All methods and procedures were approved by the University Committee on Lab Animals at Dalhousie in accordance with Canadian Council on Animal Care guidelines: Protocol # 12-023.

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Roach, S.P., Mennill, D.J. & Phillmore, L.S. Operant discrimination of relative frequency ratios in black-capped chickadee song. Anim Cogn 20, 961–973 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1115-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1115-5

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