Birdsong meme diversity in a habitat landscape depends on landscape and species characteristics

作者：Sebastian Gonzalez Esther^*; Hart Patrick J

来源：Oikos, 2017, 126(10): 1511-1521.

DOI：10.1111/oik.04531

Acoustic signaling is a form of information transmission that in many animal species may be behaviorally learnt and transmitted between individuals, creating flows of cultural traits (i.e. memes) across the landscape. The biogeography of memetic traits can have major implications for avian population evolution, ecology and conservation. We characterize the alpha (i.e. within population), beta (i.e. among populations) and gamma (i.e. total) acoustic diversity (i.e. number of memes) for four species of Hawaiian forest birds within a fragmented landscape. We study the effects of species characteristics (mobility and population size), and landscape variables (isolation and patch size) on patterns of meme diversity. We expect an increase in meme alpha-diversity with patch and population size, and a decrease with patch isolation. We also expect beta meme diversity to increase with patch isolation, and this relationship to be stronger for the less mobile species. We used spectrogram analyses and automatic sound recorders to characterize the acoustic diversity. We studied the overall meme structure and the factors affecting meme diversity with network analysis and a modeling approach. As predicted, large patches had richer alpha-diversities for all species, while the effect of isolation was species-dependent. Patches with larger populations showed greater alpha-diversities for two species. beta-diversity only increased with distance for one highly mobile species. The structure of the acoustic traits was nested (i.e. memes in patches with lower meme diversities are a subset of the memes in patches with higher meme diversities) for all the species. Moreover, the meme structure for the Apapane Himatione sanguinea suggested the existence of acoustic dialects'. Meme diversity depended on both landscape variables (patch size and isolation), and some species characteristics (population size). The results of this study improve our understanding of the transmission of information by animals in fragmented landscapes.

• 出版日期2017-10