Acoustic but no genetic divergence in migratory and sedentary populations of blackcaps,Sylvia atricapilla

Abstract

In songbirds, territorial songs are key regulators of sexual selection and are learned from conspecifics. The cultural transmission of songs leads to divergence in song characteristics within populations, which can ultimately lead to speciation. Many songbirds also migrate, and individual differences in migratory behaviours can influence population genetic structure and local song differentiation. Blackcaps, Sylvia atricapilla, exhibit versatile territorial songs and show diversity in migration behaviours. They therefore comprise a good model for investigating the relationships between migratory patterns, song variation, and genetic diversity. We studied a migratory population (two groups near Paris) and a sedentary population (three groups in Corsica). All of the birds were ringed and blood sampled to investigate genetic relatedness using 17 microsatellite loci. A detailed song analysis showed that this species has a complex repertoire (> 100 syllables), which required the development of a semi-supervised method to classify different categories of syllables and compare sequences of syllables. Our analysis showed no genetic structuring among populations: individuals belonging to the same group were not genetically closer than those from different groups. However, we found a strong wingsize difference between sedentary and migratory populations. We also showed that geographical variations in songs rely at least on both syllable and sequence content. Unexpectedly, despite a higher turnover of individuals, migratory groups share as many syllables and sequences as sedentary groups, which raises interesting issues on song learning and the maintenance of dialects in migratory birds.

High levels of gene flow among song dialect populations of the Puget Sound white‐crowned sparrow

“… References: 1 Baker (); 2 Baker et al. (); 3 Balaban (); 4 González and Ornelas (); 5 Hafner and Petersen (); 6 Handford and Nottebohm (); 7 Leader, Geffen, Mokady, and Yom‐Tov (); 8 Linossier, Zsebők, Baudry, Aubin, and Courvoisier (); 9 Lipshutz et al. (); 10 Lougheed and Handford (); 11 MacDougall‐Shackleton and MacDougall‐Shackleton (); 12 Nicholls, Austin, Moritz, and Goldizen (); 13 Pavlova et al.…”

The effect of social environment on bird song: listener-specific expression of a sexual signal

“…The correlation between the two estimates (Pearson’s correlation, r = 0.8, df = 318, P < 10 –15 ) indicated that the k-means clustering method serves as a reliable surrogate for repertoire size. Therefore, to estimate the repertoire size in our study, we calculated the number of k-mean clusters that could be detected for a given individual based on 20 songs (see also Linossier et al 2016 ). We also calculated song rate (the number of songs in a minute calculated as 60/median of song intervals), which inherently corresponded to the same hierarchical level.…”

Proximate drivers of migration propensity: a meta-analysis across species

“…Internal factors such as body size (Linossier et al, 2016;Rolandsen et al, 2017;Strait et al, 2021) and breeding status (Hegemann et al, 2015;Thériault et al, 2007), drive migration in some species. Internal factors are likely influenced by a combination of genetic variation and an animal's external environment.…”