A novel statistical method for behaviour sequence analysis and its application to birdsong
Section snippets
Animals
We captured 58 male and 48 female adult European starlings between December 2006 and February 2007 in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A. The birds were housed indoors in same-sex groups in stainless-steel cages on an 18:6 h light:dark cycle to induce a photorefractory state, a condition characterized by regressed gonads and a lack of sexual behaviour (Falk & Gwinner, 1988). All experiments were in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guidelines and approved by the Institutional Animal Care
Initial Exploratory Statistical Analysis and Definition of State Space
The song recording collection consisted of songs recorded from spring control males (N = 13 birds, 1–82 songs per individual), spring POM-lesioned males (N = 7 birds, 1–42 songs per individual) and autumn males (N = 12 birds, 10–63 songs per individual).
Whistle1 had a significantly longer duration than whistle2 (mean ± SD: whistle1: 7.30 ± 2.38 s; whistle2: 3.86 ± 2.43 s; Wilcoxon two-sample test: W = 46,037.5, P < 0.001). The duration of whistleSong (17.68 ± 6.64 s) was significantly longer than that of whistle1 (W
Discussion
We developed novel statistical tools to analyse sequence data that differ in both order and duration and applied them to sequences of birdsong. We first discuss what these statistical methods reveal about birdsong and then highlight the strengths of this statistical approach.
Acknowledgments
This paper is based upon work supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grants R01MH65645 and R01MH080225 to L.V.R. We gratefully acknowledge Ian Batterman for his assistance with song analysis, Alex Kreibich and Tram Ta for their assistance with data manipulation and Kate Skogen and Chris Elliott for animal care.
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