The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

are type A and are sung in long strings of the same type.They tend to

be simple and stereotyped and are often shared between neighbors.This

sort of singing behavior predominates before pairing and is thought to

function primarily in interactions between the sexes.Type B songs are

not sung in long sequences of the same type,but alternate with each

other.They also tend to be more complex,are likely to be specific to a

particular bird,and are mostly sung late in the season.Staicer suggests

that this sort of singing is mainly in male-male interactions.The main dif-

ference between types A and B is more in singing behavior than in the

songs themselves:one bird may use a song in type A singing that another

uses in type B.

Similar singing behavior was described for the yellow warbler (Den-

droica petechia;Spector 1991) and American redstart (Setophaga ruti-

cilla;Lemon et al.1985).In the latter,one song type,which Lemon et al.

called its repeat song,is sung in long bouts (AAAAA),and the others,

its serial songs,are sung with immediate variety (BCDECBCE).They

too suggest that repeat singing functions between the sexes,whereas

serial singing is used as a signal between males,albeit without the redun-

dancy usually found in this context.

The notion that different song types,or forms of singing behavior,

function in different ways has been proposed for a number of other

species.Many American warblers have two types of songs that occur in

rather different circumstances.The so-called accented song has a dis-

tinctive stress on its last element and is produced largely in the presence

of females,whereas the unaccented song occurs mostly in male-male

encounters.Cases such as these,where song types differ in meaning,are,

however,comparatively rare.In most species,all types convey the same

message and are exactly equivalent to one another,as is the case in the

chaffinch.

Large Repertoires

Nightingale

The song of the European nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) was

studied extensively by Todt and Hultsch (1996).Each song type that a

bird has occurs in identical form whenever it is sung,except that a par-

ticular element may be repeated a variable number of times.However,

the nightingale has a large repertoire that may include over 200 song

types.These fall into small groups,or packages,that tend to be sung close

together (Hultsch and Todt 1989).Thus a bird may start off ABCDEF

and perhaps half an hour later it might sing BEDF.There is always imme-

diate variety:the same song is not repeated twice.The order within a

54 Peter J.B.Slater

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