Skip to main content
Dryad

Cultural atlas of vocal variation in the yellow-naped amazon parrot

Data files

Aug 03, 2023 version files 83.05 MB

Abstract

Vocal dialects are a taxonomically widespread phenomenon, which are usually studied in a restricted portion of a species’ range. It is unclear whether geographic patterns observed in one part of a species’ range can be inferred as typical across the range or whether local conditions influence the presence or absence of dialects. We examined the yellow-naped amazon, Amazona auropalliata, a parrot species with remarkable vocal learning capabilities. Although this species is native to Mesoamerica, only Costa Rican populations have been evaluated long-term. Previous studies have shown that these populations exhibit geographically and temporally stable vocal dialect patterns. Without data on populations outside of Costa Rica, it is impossible to know if vocal dialects are present in northern range populations, and whether or not they exhibit similar geographic structure to southern range populations. We recorded yellow-naped amazon contact calls at 47 different sites across the range between 2016 and 2019 and evaluated them for the presence of dialects. We visually classified 14 contact call types based on spectrographic similarity and used spectrographic cross-correlation, principal component analysis, and Mantel-based spatial autocorrelations to assess acoustic similarity. The results from our study show that the vocal patterns previously seen in Costa Rica are also present in northern range populations, supporting our hypothesis. Call types were regionally specific (e.g., vocal dialects) across the range, and no call types were repeated across multiple regions. We did, however, observe distinctive structural characteristics that are found in multiple call types, suggesting that different call types stem from a common origin. Vocal dialect in this species is likely maintained through a tendency toward philopatry and matching call types to enhance social identification.