Effects of housing condition and early corticosterone treatment on learned features of song in adult male zebra finches

摘要: Abstract Early developmental stress can have long-term physiological and behavioral effects on an animal. Developmental early corticosterone (Cort) exposure affect song quality in many songbirds. housing condition act as a stressor the growth of nestlings adult song, improvements reverse adverse rodents. However, little is known about this effect Therefore, we took novel approach to investigate if modify Cort male zebra finches. We manipulated conditions include breeding large communal flight cages (FC; standard condition; with mixed-sex mix-aged birds) versus individual (IBC, one male–female pair small, IBC-S, or clutches, IBC-L) post-hatch treated birds. found that birds from IBC-S higher overall learning scores (between tutor pupil) than FC but there no difference between these groups No-Cort When examining within each condition, decreased increased compared controls. Likewise, total number syllables syllable types significantly FC-reared though was not statistically significant. These findings suggest treatment learned features depend condition.