Limited auditory memory for conspecific songs in a non-territorial songbird

Abstract

Males of territorial songbird species have to remember a large number of conspecific songs to defend their territories, while non-territorial songbirds do not need to. A study of a territorial species suggested seemingly unlimited auditory memory size. We measured auditory memory in Bengalese finches, a non-territorial songbird species, to examine whether the auditory memory size for conspecific songs depends on the ecological requirements for song use. Five birds were trained by operant techniques to classify song stimuli into two arbitrary categories. The learning curve reached an asymptote within approximately 100 sessions in all five birds and only eight songs were concurrently remembered on average. Results suggest that ecological requirements for song use are correlated with the auditory song memory capacity.