title: A quantitative method for analyzing species-specific vocal sequence pattern and its developmental dynamics.
abstract: Songbirds are a preeminent animal model for understanding the neural basis underlying the development and evolution of a complex learned behavior, bird song. However, only a few quantitative methods exist to analyze these species-specific sequential behaviors in multiple species using the same calculation method.
  
  
  
  We report a method of analysis that focuses on calculating the frequency of characteristic syllable transitions in songs. This method comprises two steps: The first step involves forming correlation matrices of syllable similarity scores, named syllable similarity matrices (SSMs); these are obtained by calculating the round-robin comparison of all the syllables in two songs, while maintaining the sequential order of syllables in the songs. In the second step, each occurrence rate of three patterns of binarized "2 rows×2 columns" cells in the SSMs is calculated to extract information on the characteristic syllable transitions.
  
  
  
  The SSM analysis method allowed obtaining species-specific features of song patterns and intraspecies individual variability simultaneously. Furthermore, it enabled quantitative tracking of the developmental trajectory of the syllable sequence patterns.
  
  
  
  This method enables us to extract the species-specific song patterns and dissect the regulation of song syntax development without human-biased procedures for syllable identification. This method can be adapted to study the acoustic communication systems in several animal species, such as insects and mammals.
  
  
  
  This present method provides a comprehensive qualitative approach for understanding the regulation of species specificity and its development in vocal learning.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Raimu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Imai
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Azusa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sawai
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Shin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hayase
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Furukawa
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Chinweike Norman
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Asogwa
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Miguel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sanchez
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Hongdi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan.
authors.forename: Chihiro
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mori
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan; Department of Biological Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan; Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-810, Japan. Electronic address: wada@sci.hokudai.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Kazuhiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wada
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D046369:Finches; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000379:methods*; D046370:Sparrows; D013045:Species Specificity; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: Individual variation; Song learning; Species specificity; Syntax; Vocal development; Vocal learning; Zebra finch