Acoustic signals mediate mate choice, resource defense, and species recognition in a broad
range of taxa. It has been proposed, therefore, that divergence in acoustic signals plays a …

Culture (behaviour based on socially transmitted information) is present in diverse animal
species, yet how it interacts with genetic evolution remains largely unexplored. Here, we …

Human cultural traits—behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other
individuals—can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution, and researchers …

Despite theoretical justification for the evolution of animal culture, empirical evidence for it
beyond mammals and birds remains scant, and we still know little about the process of …

It is often assumed in experiments and models that social learning abilities–how often
individuals copy others, plus who and how they copy–are species-typical. Yet there is …

The dramatic increase in human activities all over the world has caused, on an evolutionary
time scale, a sudden rise in especially low‐pitched noise levels. Ambient noise may be …

Sexual selection has a reputation as a major cause of speciation, one of the most potent
forces driving reproductive isolation. This reputation arises from observations that species …

Learning is widespread in nature, occurring in most animal taxa and in several different
ecological contexts and, thus, might play a key role in evolutionary processes. Here, we …

Publisher Summary This chapter outlines the evolution of geographic variation in birdsong.
Studies of vocal signals in birds offer potentially useful opportunities for empirical tests of the …

Molecular studies of speciation in birds over the last three decades have been dominated by
a focus on the geography, ecology, and timing of speciation, a tradition traceable to Mayr's …