Social Information Embedded in Vocalizations Induces Neurogenomic and Behavioral Responses

Social cues facilitate relationships within communities. Zebra finches form long-term stable mate pairs and produce offspring within a multi-family, multi-generational community that can include hundreds of birds. Males use song to communicate in this complex environment. Males sing as part of their courtship display but also abundantly throughout each day, suggesting a role for their vocal signature outside of a reproductive context. One advantage of a vocal social cue is that it can be exchanged when birds are out of visual contact, as regularly occurs in a zebra finch community. Previous works have demonstrated that females hearing song are affected by their social relationship to the bird singing it, and the immediate social context. Here, we probed the question of whether or not the song itself carried social information, as would be expected from the situations when males sing outside of view of the female. We quantified behavioral and neurogenomic responses to two songs we predicted would have distinct “attractive” qualities in adult females housed in either mixed sex or female-only social communities. Our results show that only mixed sex-housed females show distinctive behavioral and neurogenomic responses to attractive songs. These data are consistent with the idea that the acoustic properties of song carry social information, and that the current social situation modulates the neural and behavioral responses to these signals.