In many species, birds that are not exposed to tutor song during the sensitive phases of song ontogeny develop atypical vocalizations, exhibiting unusual note structures, decreased stereotypies, abnormal song length, and other temporal abnormalities ( Price, 1979 Marler and Sherman, 1985 Chaiken et al., 1993 Feher et al., 2009 Kagawa et al., 2014). Social learning is an essential component of normal song development for oscine passerines ( Beecher and Brenowitz, 2005). However, differences in vocal performance do not show strong links to cultural inheritance, instead potentially serving as condition dependent signals. These findings suggest that high learning fidelity of song material, i.e., song structure and note characteristics, could allow novel variants to be preserved and accumulate over generations, with implications for evolution and conservation.

For vocal consistency of note subtypes, a measure of vocal performance, there was no apparent evidence of social or genetic inheritance, but both age and developmental environment influenced consistency.

Overall, we found strong evidence for cultural inheritance of song structure and of the acoustic characteristics of notes sons’ song syntax and note composition were similar to that of their social fathers and were not influenced by genetic relatedness. Six-hundred and seventy-six songs from 73 birds were segmented and classified into notes and note subtypes ( N = 22,972), for which a range of acoustic features were measured. Using archived song data, we examined patterns of song inheritance in a domestic population of Java sparrows ( Lonchura oryzivora), some of which had been cross-fostered. However, relative contributions are well-described only for a few species and are likely to vary with taxonomy. The relative contributions of these factors can have a strong influence on song evolution and may affect important evolutionary processes such as speciation. However, other factors, such as genetic inheritance and the developmental environment, can also influence song phenotype. Social learning of vocalizations is integral to song inheritance in oscine passerines. 4Department of Natural Sciences, Ecology and Environment Research Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom.3Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan.1Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Like father like son song