Scientists have tracked for the first time a song that “went viral” on some kind of bird.
Most of our feathered friends are slow to change their tune, preferring to stick with tried and tested songs to defend territories and attract women.
Now, a 20-year study has found how a rare ‘tweet’ traveled nearly 2,000 miles across Canada and the United States.
The analysis, based on recordings collected by birdwatchers between 2000 and 2019, found that the new beat erased a historical song that ended in the process. White-throated sparrows from British Columbia to central Ontario have abandoned their traditional three-note finish in favor of a unique two-note variant.
Popular music often goes viral among people, especially when it evokes an emotional response, but the reason why the new sound became so compelling among the striking sparrows remains a mystery.
Lead author Professor Ken Otter of the University of Northern British Columbia said, “A rare sparrow song ‘went viral. As far as we know, it is unprecedented.”
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“We don’t know of any other study that has seen this type of spread through the cultural evolution of a type of song.”
Changing your tweet
It is well known that some bird species change their songs over time, but these cultural evolutions tend to linger in local populations. They become regional dialects rather than the norm for the species. But, for some reason, the new two-note ending began to extend further.
In the 1960s, white-throated sparrows in Canada whistled a song that ended in a repeated three-note treble.
By the time Professor Otter moved to British Columbia in western Canada in the late 1990s and began listening to local bird songs, the new two-note ending had already invaded local sparrow populations, and by the Over the course of 40 years, the songs ended in two notes, or double-ending songs, had become universal west of the Rocky Mountains.
The researchers began to analyze recordings of songs of white-throated sparrows that had been uploaded to online databases by a large network of citizen birdwatchers across North America.
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They discovered that the new double-ending song was not only most popular west of the Rocky Mountains, but was rapidly spreading east beyond these western populations.
“Originally, we measured dialect boundaries in 2004 and halted half of Alberta,” said Professor Otter. “In 2014, every bird we recorded in Alberta sang this western dialect, and we began to see it appear in populations as far away as Ontario, which is 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) from us.”
The scientists predicted that the sparrows’ overwintering grounds were playing a role in the rapid diffusion of the end of two notes. They knew that birds sang in the wintering grounds, so juvenile males could have been buying new types of songs if they spent the winter with birds from other areas of the dialect.
“This would allow males to learn new types of songs in the winter and take them to new places when they return to breeding sites, which would help explain how the song type could spread.”
The researchers then linked sparrows with small geo-locators, which showed that western sparrows who knew that the new song shared hibernation zones with eastern populations, who later adopted it.
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The phenomenon of a species completely replacing a historical song that had persisted for decades is almost unknown in male songbirds, and the researchers reported their findings in Current biology.
However, researchers found that the new song did not give males a territorial advantage over their counterparts. But what about the mating benefits?
Now they want to find out if female birds have a preference between the two songs because in previous studies females tended to prefer the local song type.
“In white-throated sparrows, we could find a situation where women really like songs that are not typical in their environment, and if that’s the case, there is a great advantage for any man who can sing a new type of song. “
Professor Otter and his team are excited to continue to use private birder recordings that bring them to apps and websites across the continent, giving researchers a much clearer picture of what is happening.
“It allows us to do research that was never possible before.”
CLOCK the two songs below: Story of Mark Waghorn, SWNS
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