Meeting Abstract
Many taxa produce long-range acoustics signals for the purpose of communication with conspecifics. These signals play an important role in mate attraction and retention as well as territory defense, which are key behaviors for reproductive success. The Acoustic Adaptation Hypothesis (AAH) posits that long-range acoustic signals are adapted for minimized signal degradation in the environment in which they are produced, leading to optimized communication within a species’ preferred habitat. While some playback experiments have found evidence for the AAH in structurally ‘open’ vs. ‘closed’ habitats, support for the AAH remains unclear when considering finer-scale differences in habitat structure and when assessing effects of habitat structure on multiple species’ signals. This study is the first comprehensive test of the AAH, which assess acoustic signal quality in a more diverse set of spatial and temporal habitats across a set of songbird species which exhibit large variability in both song structure and habitat preference. We used PCA on several habitat characteristics in multiple distinct habitats, both during and after the breeding season, and determined that breeding territories for these species are most differentiated by their vegetation density and topographical properties. We then quantified signal degradation and found that the three different measures of quality, which quantify changes in signal strength and shape over distance, are associated with separate and sometimes conflicting environmental aspects. This indicates that birds may not be able to optimize all three measures of signal quality for one specific environment, and may face trade-offs between producing songs that are either loud, clear, or separate from noise in their preferred habitat.
