Studies of the biology of music (as of language) are highly interdisciplinary and demand the
integration of diverse strands of evidence. In this paper, I present a comparative perspective …

The function of bird song is closely linked to sexual selection. A fundamental question
regarding the evolution of sexually selected male signals is how their honesty is maintained …

Behavioral Ecology of Tropical Birds, Second Edition provides the most updated and
comprehensive review on the evolution of behavior in tropical landbirds. The book reviews …

Animal Traditions maintains that the assumption that the selection of genes supplies both a
sufficient explanation of the evolution and a true description of its course is, despite its …

The oscine passerines, or 'songbirds', are one of the few animal taxa in which individuals
learn their vocal signals. Recent comparative studies reveal a remarkable diversity of song …

SYNOPSIS. The developmental processes through which songbirds acquire their species—
typical songs have been well—studied from a proximate perspective, but less attention has …

The nutritional stress hypothesis explains how learned features of song, such as complexity
and local dialect structure, can serve as indicators of male quality of interest to females in …

Publisher Summary This chapter outlines the evolution of geographic variation in birdsong.
Studies of vocal signals in birds offer potentially useful opportunities for empirical tests of the …

Female songbirds are thought to assess males based on aspects of song, such as repertoire
size or amount of singing, that could potentially provide information about male quality. A …

Males of many songbird species use song repertoires that contain multiple song types. A
commonly encountered evolutionary explanation for this trait and its recurrent appearance …