Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Visual signals are shaped by variation in the signaling environment through a process termed sensory drive, sometimes leading to speciation. However, the evidence for sensory drive in acoustic signals is restricted to comparisons between highly dissimilar habitats, or single-species studies in which it is difficult to rule out the influence of undetected ecological variables, pleiotropic effects, or chance. Here we assess whether this form of sensory drive-often termed "acoustic adaptation"-can generate signal divergence across ecological gradients. By studying avian communities in two Amazonian forest types, we show that songs of 17 "bamboo-specialist" bird species differ in predictable ways from their nearest relatives in adjacent terra firme forest. We also demonstrate that the direction of song divergence is correlated with the sound transmission properties of habitats, rather than with genetic divergence, ambient noise, or pleiotropic effects of mass and bill size. Our findings indicate that acoustic adaptation adds significantly to stochastic processes underlying song divergence, even when comparing between habitats with relatively similar structure. Furthermore, given that song differences potentially contribute to reproductive isolation, these findings are consistent with a wider role for sensory drive in the diversification of lineages with acoustic mating signals.

Original publication

DOI

10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01067.x

Type

Journal article

Journal

Evolution

Publication Date

10/2010

Volume

64

Pages

2820 - 2839

Keywords

Acoustic Stimulation, Adaptation, Physiological, Animals, Biological Evolution, Birds, Ecology, Phenotype, Selection, Genetic, Species Specificity, Stochastic Processes, Vocalization, Animal