How genes shape birdsong, even when birds grow up far from home

With the arrival of spring, a timeless ritual begins anew: male birds fill the air with song, seeking to attract mates and defend their territories from other competing males. But there is a lot we still don’t understand about how birds learn which sounds to sing. Our latest study offers new insights and suggests genes may play a more important role than scientists realised. In nearly half of the world’s bird species, young birds learn by imitating the songs of adults. As birds learn songs from one another, mistakes inevitably happen, leading to variation in songs between populations of the same species, similar to the formation of d......

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