Wednesday 4 April 2012

Sparrows Change Their Tune to Be Heard in Noisy Cities

ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2012) — Sparrows in San Francisco's Presidio district changed their tune to soar above the increasing cacophony of car horns and engine rumbles, details new Mason research in the April edition of Animal Behaviour.



"It shows a strong link between the change in song and the change in noise," says David Luther, term assistant professor in Mason's undergraduate biology program. "It's also the first study that I know of to track the songs over time and the responses of birds to historical and current songs."
The study, "Birdsongs Keep Pace with City Life: Changes in Song Over Time in an Urban Songbird Affects Communication," compares birdsongs from as far back as 1969 to today's tweets. Plus, the researchers detail how San Francisco's streets have grown noisier based on studies from 1974 and 2008.
Luther wrote the study with Elizabeth Derryberry, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Tulane University and a research assistant professor at Louisiana State University's Museum of Natural Science. "We've created this artificial world, although one could say it's the real world now, with all this noise -- traffic, leaf blowers, air conditioners," Luther says. "A lot of birds are living in these areas, and what, if anything, is this doing to their songs?"
Turns out, quite a bit.

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