The anti-exhaustion hypothesis: a new hypothesis to explain song performance and song switching in the great tit |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, U.S.A.;2. Department of Psychology, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, U.S.A.;1. Laboratory of Interfacial and Advanced Materials, Faculty of Sciences (FSM), University of Monastir, Monastir 5000, Tunisia;2. Textile Materials and Process Research Unit (ENIM), University of Monastir, Monastir 5000, Tunisia;3. Institute of Chemistry of Condensed Materials Bordeaux CNRS, University of Bordeaux I, 87 Avenue Dr. A. Schweitzer 33608 Pessac-Cedex, France;1. College of Life Science, Hebei University, Baoding 071000, China;2. College of Biology and Food Science, Hebei Normal University for Nationalities, Chengde 067000, China;1. Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai University, 200444 Shanghai, China;2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai University, 200444 Shanghai, China;3. Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, MADIREL, Marseille, France;4. Aix-Marseille University, Université de Toulon, CNRS, IM2NP, Marseille, France;5. Titanium Alloy Laboratory, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 110016 Shenyang, China |
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| Abstract: | This paper describes the results of a detailed analysis of 52 song bouts, recorded from 22 great tits, Parus major, during the dawn chorus. A song bout consists of a number of song bursts (called strophes) separated by periods of silence. High quality males, as measured by average strophe length, sang their bouts with a higher percentage performance time (i.e. the percentage of time spent singing in a bout), but the average number of strophes per bout was not related to male quality. In 31 of 52 bouts there was a systematic decrease in the percentage performance time throughout the bout. This was mainly caused by a prolongation of the pauses between the strophes, and sometimes by a shortening of the strophes. Both high and low quality males sang bouts with and without this decrease in the percentage performance time. Bouts that started with longer strophes and/or shorter inter-strophe pauses showed on average a more rapid decrease in the percentage performance time, and contained fewer strophes, than bouts that started with shorter strophes and/or longer inter-strophe pauses. After switching to another song type the males again used longer strophes and/or shorter inter-strophe pauses. An ‘anti-exhaustion’ hypothesis is proposed and discussed. This hypothesis gives a mainly causal explanation for the existence of song switching and song repertoires in passerine birds. |
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