GELIFES Seminars - Marc Naguib

Link to seminar

Marc Naguib (WUR)

Communication and social organization of zebra finches in the wild

Birdsong is an important model system for animal communication and typically functions in critical life-history events such as mate attraction and territory defense. The zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata is the most studied songbird under controlled laboratory conditions. Yet, as males are not territorial, and pairs form long-term monogamous faithful bonds early in life, conventional theory predicts that zebra finches should not sing much at all. However, they do and their song is the focus of hundreds of lab-based studies. To uncover the likely wider functions of their song, we studied zebra finches over several years in their natural environment, the Australian Outback. Using calibrated manual and automatic audio recording techniques, standardised behavioural observations on song and breeding activity as well as acoustic experiments, we show that zebra finches sing uncharacteristically soft leading to very short communication distances of only a few meters, considering also their hearing thresholds. We also show that they sing outside of breeding periods and in a variety of social contexts, suggesting that male song plays an important function in social cohesion and synchronization. In this presentation I will first cover some broader studies integrating animal communication with spatial organization, and then focus on our current field research on zebra finches in Australia. I will also show preliminary results on their movements and social organization, resulting from a large automatized radio-tracking project we started in 2002. These findings on communication and social organization provide novel insights in the social life of birds and specifically the prime laboratory species in avian acoustics, the zebra finch. Their song system contrasts with the classical birdsong functions of mate attraction and territory defense, inviting us to broaden our view on the functions of birdsong in general.

Biosketch:
Marc is chairholder of the Behavioural Ecology Group at Wageningen University. His research focuses on animal communication, using birdsong as a model system, and on spatial organization (radio-tracking) and territorial behaviour, also using songbirds. Most of his research has been on nightingales, great tits and zebra finches, addressing a wide range of topics in animal behaviour. Since more recently he has also been working on conservation behaviour and human-wildlife conflict along the avian migratory pathways of the Nile. Marc studied Biology at the Freie Universität in West-Berlin and did his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He worked at the FU Berlin and Bielefeld University for some years and led the Animal Personality Research Group at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology before joining Wageningen University in 2011.