A new paper from work in the Williams lab has been published in Animal Behaviour – Clint Robins is a former honors student who received his Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Washington in 2023. His thesis data were collected before foreign songs were broadcast on our study site, and made it possible to compare responses of wild Savannah sparrows to songs before, during, and after they heard those foreign songs. As a general rule, the local dialect draws a stronger response from males, and we now know why. When males hear a song type as they are learning their songs, and that same song type is sung by approximately 90% of the males in their area when they are adults, they recognize it as a local dialect that is a strong threat to their territories and ability to mate with females. Read more about Clint’s work here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.12.011
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