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Project properties |
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| Title | Animal Communication: Songbird vocal communication
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| Group | Behavioural Ecology |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 12-36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Marc Naguib |
| Examiner(s) | Marc Naguib |
| Contact info | marc.naguib@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2017/11/01 |
| End date | 2025/12/31 |
| Description | Birdsong is among the best studied signalling systems in animals. In most species in the temperate zones, only the males sing, mainly to advertise and defend a territory and to attract a female. Song can reflect a range of different traits, such as motivational traits, qualitative traits, or personality traits. Moreover song is a long range signal and thus has evolved under the acoustic constrains of the habitat. Birds sing mainly during the breeding season and recordings often are time consuming to obtain. A large existing set of recordings will allow students to become familiar with theories of communication, the function of signals and with methods in acoustic analyses. Project possibilities can cover literature work on various specific questions related to vocal communication, analysis of existing recordings of great tits with known personality, or of vocal interactions in nightingales, analysing bird songs in relation to the habitat (environmental adaptation of song), or in spring own playback experiments. Projects could also involve obtaining and analysing own recordings.
Supervisor: prof. dr. Marc Naguib (email for project details) |
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