Early experience determines song dialect responsiveness of female sparrows.
In a laboratory experiment, female white-crowned sparrows responded almost exclusively to male songs taken from their home dialect region and usually not to songs taken from an alien dialect region. Song dialect populations may represent a level of genetic population structure below that of the subspecies and may play an important role in songbird evolution.
Baker
M C
MC
Spitler-Nabors
K J
KJ
Bradley
D C
DC