Animals can learn efficiently from a single experience and change their future behavior in
response. However, in other instances, animals learn very slowly, requiring thousands of …

A critical question in the study of the evolution of cognition and the brain concerns the extent
to which variation in cognitive processes and associated neural mechanisms is adaptive …

Male songbirds sing to establish territories and to attract mates. 1, 2 However, increasing
reports of singing in non-reproductive contexts 3 and by females 4, 5 show that song use is …

Research on mate choice has primarily focused on preferences for quality indicators,
assuming that all individuals show consensus about who is the most attractive. However, in …

Mate choice studies routinely assume female preferences for indicators of high quality in
males but rarely consider developmental causes of within-population variation in mating …

To what extent do individuals assess the cognitive abilities of the opposite sex when
choosing a mate? With the exception of song learning in birds, the hypothesis that cognitive …

Vocal signals, including human speech and birdsong, are produced by complicated,
precisely coordinated body movements, whose execution is fitness-determining in resource …

Vocal learners use early social experience to develop auditory skills specialized for
communication. However, it is unknown where in the auditory pathway neural responses …

Like humans, oscine songbirds exhibit vocal learning. They learn their song by imitating
conspecifics, mainly adults. Among them, the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) has been …

Organisms filter the complexity of natural stimuli through their individual sensory and
perceptual systems. Such perceptual filtering is particularly important for social stimuli. A …