Abstract

Aspects of bird song have been shown to correlate with morphological and ecological features, including beak and body size, and habitat. Here we study evolution of song length and song frequency among 30 species belonging to the Cettiidae. Frequency is negatively correlated with body size, and song length increases with latitude. Although migration distance correlates with latitude, the association of song length with latitude is only present within the non-migratory species, implying the association is not a consequence of migration. We place these correlations in a historical framework to show that the body size-frequency association arose early in the group, but the latitude-song length association is more evolutionarily labile. We suggest that latitudinal correlates of song length may reflect increased importance of sexual selection by female choice.

Published in

Journal of Avian Biology
2017, Volume: 48, number: 10, pages: 1295-1300
Publisher: WILEY

SLU Authors

• Alström, Per

  • SLU Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Uppsala University

UKÄ Subject classification

Evolutionary Biology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jav.01366

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/93126