{"id":5959,"date":"2017-12-12T12:32:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T17:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5959"},"modified":"2017-12-12T12:32:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T17:32:46","slug":"sparrows-song-might-help-determine-health-of-potential-mates-and-compatibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/sparrows-song-might-help-determine-health-of-potential-mates-and-compatibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Sparrows&#8217; song might help determine health of potential mates and compatibility <img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5960\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5960\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5960\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/38532686316_80c58510c0_z.jpg\" alt=\"Song Sparrow (Image by Becky Matsubara via Flickr CC BY 2.0\" width=\"640\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/38532686316_80c58510c0_z.jpg 640w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/38532686316_80c58510c0_z-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5960\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Song Sparrow<em> (Image by Becky Matsubara <a href=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/21H16bC\">via Flickr CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Complexity of a male bird&#8217;s song can help attract the most compatible mate, new research suggests. Researchers investigated whether song repertoire and complexity advertises the singer\u2019s genetic dissimilarity to others in the population &#8212; something that could help a couple raise the most viable young. A male bird&#8217;s health influences how well it can learn complex songs and expand its repertoire. As a result, female birds may be able to evaluate a male\u2019s health by listening to his song: males with attractive and complex songs might have more different types of disease-resistance genes. In the present study, researchers discovered that songbirds with the most complex songs had intermediate rather than maximal numbers of disease-resistance genes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>J. W. G. Slade, M. J. Watson, E. A. MacDougall-Shackleton<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corresponding author:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Elizabeth MacDougall-Shackleton, Department of Biology, Western University, London, ON. \u00a0Email:\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:emacdoug@uwo.ca\">emacdoug@uwo.ca<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/13\/11\/20170430\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a> published in <em>Biology Letters<\/em> on November 8, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Complexity of a male bird&#8217;s song can help attract the most compatible mate, new research suggests. Researchers investigated whether song repertoire and complexity advertises the singer\u2019s genetic dissimilarity to others in the population &#8212; something that could help a couple raise the most viable young. A male bird&#8217;s health influences how well it can learn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2993,3231,917,3232,3234,3233],"class_list":["post-5959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-birdsong","tag-compatible-genes","tag-evolution","tag-genetic-diversity","tag-melospiza-melodia","tag-song-sparrow"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/38532686316_80c58510c0_z.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1y7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5962,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5959\/revisions\/5962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}