I just received this lovely letter signed, "Voz Londy." I searched the name and found dozens of examples of people receiving beautiful handwritten letters from this person. What a human! #randomactsofkindness #vozlondy #ecuatorialguinea
The Birdsong Lab is recruiting graduate students to study vocal communication in tropical birds. The deadline to apply is less than a week away! #birds #birdsong #ornithology #animalbehavior #BirdsCanada #AcademicSky #SciComm
Want to learn conservation genetics from an international team of experts? The 30th iteration of the intensive, hands-on ConGen course will be in Brazil this year. congenglobal.org/brazil2026/
For the 2026 ABS Meeting, the Latin America Affairs Committee invites all ABS members to submit lightning talk proposals for the special session Gadgets, Inventos, and Gambiarras: Creative, Budget-friendly DIY Research Methods in Animal Behavior!
In many tropical birds, both male and female sing. The sexes may sound similar or different, but AFAIK, the black-bellied wren is the only species where the sexes have "opposite" song structures. The high costs of incorrect sex recognition may have driven the evolution of sexually antithetical song.
How can we figure out the rules duetting birds use to coordinate their songs? The answer slapped me in the face when a black-bellied wren duetted with my playback (Logue 2006, 2007)! See complementary studies by Karla Rivera-Cáceres (development), Eric Fortune, and Melissa Coleman (mechanisms).
Nightingales are masters of imitation! New research shows: During territorial contests, a male matches a rival’s song in real time by tracking and imitating both, pitch and syllable duration. This shows a remarkable precision in hearing and vocal control.
🔗More: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-01-vallentin
I'm glad you reminded me of this one -- it's perfect for a project I'm working on!
Lab website: david-logue.squarespace.com
Logue's Google Scholar page: scholar.google.com/citations?hl...
U of L website: www.ulethbridge.ca?gad_source=1...
M.Sc.: www.ulethbridge.ca/future-stude...
Ph.D.: www.ulethbridge.ca/future-stude...
The Birdsong Lab is recruiting graduate students! Links in the comments. Please repost!
Why do mated songbirds sing beautifully coordinated duets? My Ph.D. work showed that duets are cooperative signals that pairs use to defend their shared territory. This visual summary is based on Logue & Gammon 2004 Animal Behaviour 68: 521-531 and Logue 2005 Cognition, Brain, Behavior 9:497-510.
I am recruiting postbacs for my parakeet sociality and cognition project, ideally to start in Feb/Mar this year. Help spreading the word would be appreciated! More information and application link available here: ornithologyexchange.org/jobs/board/s...
I made this infographic celebrating Bill Cade's scientific legacy with NotebookLM. Citations are Cade 1975, Zuk et al. 2006, Logue et al. 2010.
My postdoc superviser, Bill Cade, has passed away. One evening in the early 1970s, Bill broadcast cricket songs to attract females. Instead, he noticed strange yellow flies buzzing around the loudspeakers. Thus was discovered the now-famous acoustically-orienting parasitoid, Ormia ochracea.
A visual summary of Peter and Juley's new open access paper in Ibis. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
How do birds use song to communicate about aggressive interactions? Many studies use playback to address this question, but playback studies may not be perfect simulations of real interactions. In this study, we ask how song structure and singing behaviour change around the time of natural fights.
We're happy because we were discussing this great new paper by Volle et al. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I'm stoked to see's new YouTube channel, "Birdbrain Q&A" www.youtube.com/@BirdbrainQA...
Apply for funding to support Animal Behaviour-related conferences in Latin America. fs10.formsite.com/spltrak/fneb... #animalbehavior #ABS
Nick Bohle, Tanya Martinez, and I are making a movie! Shout out to our amazing collaborators at Almodóvar Photography and Ansonia Records. @birdcalloftheday.bsky.social @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social @parksbabel.bsky.social
#bioacoustic #birdsong #birds #PuertoRico
DM me your email and I'll send it to you.
Our new paper is a deep dive into the pros and cons of double quantile regression for estimating performance limits. academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
Here's an upgraded version of the dawn chorus visualization I posted the other day. It now plays the songs in real time, and makes song type matches more conspicuous. Leave your suggestions in the comments!
Exited about our first dynamic map of Adelaide's warblers' dawn chorus! Males sing many song types (colors & numbers) from the tops of tall trees in their territories. Here, you can see how they match one anothers' song types, causing songs 8, 3, 9, 21, and 5 to spread around the neighbourhood.
Great to see some work on duetting in New World warblers! Do the females ever use calls to duet? That's the main form of duetting in Adelaide's warbler.
What a cool place! I attended a Nat Wheelwright lecture at Colorado State University ca. 2003. It was a huge inspriration to me -- something I never forgot. It's wonderful that this system lives on!
Excited to be in Poland, giving a series of talks at the University of Warsaw!
Today I'll talk about reseach old (duets) and new (dawn chorus). Tomorrow, it's how to make your academic slides slightly less boring 😄
#Ornithology #Birdsong #ScienceCommunication #FieldworkAbroad #AcademicLife
So, these birds prefer to sing song types that are locally common and transmit long distances during the dawn chorus. The causal relationships among these variables -- individual preference, local popularity, and the propagation efficiently -- remain to be determined. 5 / 5
Preference is also associated with acoustic properties that promote long distance transmission, like low mean frequency. 4 / 5
Preference is best explained by local popularity: Individuals tend to overproduce song types that are shared with many of their neighbours. 3 / 5
