Characteristics of male Spot-bellied Bobwhite (Colinus leucopogon) song during territory establishment

Abstract

In song-learning birds, male song shows a large inter-individual variation that frequently plays an important role in intra-and inter-sexual selection. In other bird groups, such as Galliformes, song learning is absent, and inter-individual song variation is small and expected to play a minor, if any, role in sexual contexts. In the Spot-bellied Bobwhite (Colinus leucopogon) we found that many males have a unique set of song features, and our results suggest that female mate choice in this species is based in part on male song traits. Most paired males in our study had longer songs. In addition, these males established territories in the middle of the breeding season, soon after the onset of the rainy season when increases in herbaceous cover and food resources would likely increase offspring and adult survival.

Canine trypanosomiasis in an endemic Costa Rican community: Demonstration of the active infection cycle

“…In the longitudinal study, all canines seroconverted during the first months of the year, which is the dry season in Getsemaní community (Moreno Álvarez et al, 1998;Sandoval, 2011;Sandoval and Barrantes, 2012). This is consistent with findings from studies in Mexico that reported that populations of T. dimidiata were more abundant during the dry season, which has been associated with greater colonization of dwellings by these insects (Dumonteil et al, 2002).…”

“…In addition to the presence of the hematophagous vector (T. dimidiata) in dwellings, other risk factors include the ways in which the dwellings are constructed, their proximity to coffee plantations or vacant lots, and the accumulation of materials in or around the dwellings (Government of Costa Rica, 2012). These factors are present in many of the dwellings in Getsemaní, given that the main activities in the area are agriculture (Moreno Álvarez et al, 1998;Sandoval, 2011;Sandoval and Barrantes, 2012). Changes in the environment of houses infested with triatomines have been successful and turn out to be also a good way of permanent control, less expensive, more sustainable and realistic, than using fumigation with insecticides (Zeledón et al, 2008).…”

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

“…In the case of a contact signal, considering that visual communication is highly limited-even at close distances-within the dense vegetation of the territories of these Ground-sparrows (Hale 2006;Sandoval and Barrantes 2012), the production of this call type will allow both individuals of the pair to know the location of the other. In the case of an alarm signal, considering that the main predators inside thickets are stationary predators (e.g.…”

Automated birdsong recognition in complex acoustic environments: a review

“…Raven Pro is developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for acquisition, visualisation, measurement, and analysis of sounds (Charif et al 2010) and is popular among ecologists as a spectrogram analysis tool (Bura et al 2011, Crothers et al 2011, Kirschel et al 2011, Vernaleo and Dooling 2011, Sandoval and Barrantes 2012, Aland and Hoskin 2013, Aleixandre et al 2013, Arévalo and Araya-Salas 2013. The relevant tools provided are band-pass noise filtering and manual or semi-automatic syllable segmentation (Stowell and Plumbley 2011).…”