RECOGNITION OF NEIGHBORS SONG IN A SPECIES WITH LARGE AND COMPLEX SONG REPERTOIRES - THE THRUSH NIGHTINGALE

To investigate aspects of neighbor recognition in a migratory bird wit h large and complex song repertoires we conducted playback experiments in the field with male territorial Thrush Nightingales Luscinia lusci nia as subjects. Males sing with immediate variety and neighbors can s hare a considerable part of their repertoire of song components and so ng types. Subjects responded significantly more to their neighbors' so ng broadcast from the unshared (opposite) territorial boundary than to playback of the same song broadcast from the shared territorial bound ary. Thus, this study did not detect constraints on neighbor recogniti on imposed for instance by large and complex song repertoires, high si nging versatility, or sharing of song patterns. Because Thrush Nightin gales sing shared patterns in different ways, either by constructing d ifferent song types out of the shared pool of elements or by singing s hared song types in different sequential order, they could attend to s ong components and their syntactical arrangement, full songs, or their sequential delivery for neighbor recognition. Which mechanism they us e might depend on the similarity of the song and singing style of a si nger compared to other familiar conspecifics.