title: Learning to cope with degraded sounds: female zebra finches can improve their expertise in discriminating between male voices at long distances.
abstract: Reliable transmission of acoustic information about individual identity is of critical importance for pair bond maintenance in numerous monogamous songbirds. However, information transfer can be impaired by environmental constraints such as external noise or propagation-induced degradation. Birds have been shown to use several adaptive strategies to deal with difficult signal transmission contexts. Specifically, a number of studies have suggested that vocal plasticity at the emitter's level allows birds to counteract the deleterious effects of sound degradation. Although the communication process involves both the emitter and the receiver, perceptual plasticity at the receiver's level has received little attention. Here, we explored the reliability of individual recognition by female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), testing whether perceptual training can improve discrimination of degraded individual vocal signatures. We found that female zebra finches are proficient in discriminating between calls of individual males at long distances, and even more so when they can train themselves with increasingly degraded signals over time. In this latter context, females succeed in discriminating between males as far as 250 m. This result emphasizes that adaptation to adverse communication conditions may involve not only the emitter's vocal plasticity but also the receptor's decoding process through on-going learning.
authors.affiliation: Equipe de Neuro-Ethologie Sensorielle ENES-CNPS CNRS UMR8195, Université de Saint-Etienne, 42023 Saint-Etienne, France Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA solveig.mouterde@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Solveig C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Mouterde
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Julie E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Elie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Frédéric E
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Theunissen
authors.affiliation: Equipe de Neuro-Ethologie Sensorielle ENES-CNPS CNRS UMR8195, Université de Saint-Etienne, 42023 Saint-Etienne, France.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mathevon
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D046369:Finches / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D010152:Pair Bond; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: Acoustic communication; Noise; Perceptual plasticity; Propagation-induced degradation; Songbird; Vocal recognition