Language, humans' most distinctive trait, still remains a 'mystery'for evolutionary theory. It is
underpinned by a universal infrastructure—cooperative turn-taking—which has been …

In studies of cumulative cultural evolution in non-human animals, the focus is most often on
incremental changes that increase the efficacy of an existing form of socially learned …

Animal acoustic communication is one of the most fruitful research areas in behavioural and
evolutionary biology. Work in this area depends largely on quantifying the structure of …

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 …

Birds use acoustic signals to mediate a number of crucial social interactions such as
territorial defence, mate attraction and predator avoidance. Thus, differences in signalling …

A recently emerging view in music cognition holds that music is not only social and
participatory in its production, but also in its perception, ie that music is in fact perceived as …

The soundscape is proposed as a phenomenological entity with which to investigate
environmental complexity. In particular, the avian soundtope, which is defined as a place in …

Individuals often differ consistently in behaviour across time and contexts, and such
consistent behavioural differences are commonly described as personality. Personality can …

Across a wide range of animal taxa, prosodic modulation of the voice can express emotional
information and is used to coordinate vocal interactions between multiple individuals. Within …

Social interactions are central in the lives of many animals. Social partners can lower
individual stress levels (Rault, 2012), a process known in humans and primates as social …