Meeting Abstract
Research in animal communication often examines receivers’ responses to unimodal signals — signals that are transmitted and received through only one sensory channel. However, receivers are regularly exposed to multimodal signals – signals that are transmitted and received concurrently through two or more sensory channels, such as song and plumage color in birds. Behavioral responses may vary among individuals as a function of how they integrate and prioritize signals from different modalities. To determine how variation in the mechanisms underlying signal processing contributes to variation among receiver responses to signals, we examined receiver responses to compound plumage color and song quality signals in female house finches. Specifically, we were interested in whether plumage cues influenced neural response to song cues within the auditory forebrain. To determine this, we exposed female house finches (n=47) to a red or yellow male house finch (n=10) coupled with one of 20 pre-recorded house finch songs (categorized as being long and complex or short and simple). We measured the number of contact calls each female gave during presentation and then measured neural activation within three subdivisions of the auditory forebrain using immediate early gene expression. We found a non-significant trend for females exposed to red males and long complex songs to call more. Additionally, neural activity in one region of the auditory forebrain differed with song but not color treatment. These data suggest that females do integrate plumage and song cues but that the auditory forebrain is not centrally involved in the prioritization of multimodal signals.
