2009/03/19 by Florence Levréro, Laureline Durand, Clémentine Vignal +2 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Marine animal studies overview
paper · doi:10.1016/j.crvi.2009.02.006
openalex publication_date 2009/03/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In colonial birds, the recognition between parents and their offspring is essential to ensure the exclusivity of parental care. Although individual vocal recognition seems to be a key component of parent-chicks recognition, few studies assessed the period when the emergence of the vocal signature takes place. The present study investigated the acoustic cues of signaler identity carried in the begging calls at three stages of development in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata castanotis), a colonial species which experiences food-dependence after fledging. Testing parents with playback of begging calls recorded the day before fledging, we found that the offspring recognition was based on acoustic cues. Begging calls showed a highly individualized vocal signature well before fledging. The individual identity coding was multi-parametric and encoded in both spectral and temporal domains. These results suggest that the successful recognition process of offspring might be strongly dependent on the receiver's abilities to use multi-parametric acoustic cues. The precocity of the vocal signature in chicks could enable parents to familiarize with the call features of their offspring at the pre-fledging period through a learning process.