Vocal behaviour of White-eared Ground-sparrows (Melozone leucotis) during the breeding season: repertoires, diel variation, behavioural contexts, and individual distinctiveness

摘要: There are relatively few quantitative descriptive studies of the vocalisations and vocal behaviour tropical bird species, in spite tropic’s rich avian biodiversity extensive variety produced by birds. This lack information inhibits our understanding animals, including ability to perform comparative analyses on behaviours from an evolutionary perspective. In this study, we present first description repertoire daily activity White-eared Ground-sparrows (Melozone leucotis), using focal autonomous recordings collected during two consecutive breeding seasons Costa Rica. We classified into categories based their visual appearance sound spectrograms create a library for species. found that produce three main vocalisations: solo songs, calls, duets. Solo songs were only males. Each male sang song types, which all shared same general structure with short introductory notes, frequency-modulated middle section, terminal trill. Both sexes calls coordinated quantified patterns diel variation each category vocalisation, at higher output dawn (between 0500 0600 hours) compared rest day. study allowed us conduct comparisons between North American species genus Melozone, revealed both similarities differences groups. Our investigation also showed related communication within pairs territory defence (calls duets) exhibited lower levels individual distinctiveness than mainly female attraction (male songs). observations suggest types have multiple functions Ground-sparrows, revealing diverse small songbird.