Effect of tracheosyringeal denervation on call in greenfinch ( Carduelis sinica)

After sections of left or right tracheosyringeal nerve (NXIIts), greenfinches may repeat everyday calls, with no effect on temporal properties. It is suggested that either side of syrinx may produce sound alone and ipsilateral innerration of NXIIts for the syringeal muscles. After section of left NXIIts, the bird produces the vocal pattern of partial tone increase, and effects on the sound intensity and sentence length average 1.4 and 2.8 times those after section of right NXIIts, suggesting that the innervation of NXIIts has left side dominance. After bilateral section of NXIIts, the call rhythm in company with expiratory motions is 98–146 times/min, on an average, and lose all sentence types and syllable structure of normal call. But the call spectra produced by tympaniform membrane vibrations without innervation still reserve frequency components similar to the tonic frequency and harmonics of normal calls. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.39570195) and Outstanding Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China.