Undergraduate Research: An Archive - 2022 Program

Willow Dalehite ’22
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
Becky Colvin '95 Memorial Awardee; Senior Thesis
Research Funding Awardee
CONSERVATION
AND BIODIVERSITY
THESIS TITLE
The Effect of Experience
on Duet Coordination in
Carolina Wrens
(Thryothorus
ludovicianus)
ADVISER
Christina Riehl,
Assistant Professor of
Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology
Vocal duetting in birds is a form of
communication between two members of a
mated pair. In songbirds, it often occurs in
species with a tropical life history, including the
temperate Carolina wren. Various hypotheses for
the function of duetting have been investigated
in other species, but little is known about its
fitness role in Carolina wrens. I investigated
whether duet coordination is a learned behavior
that could signal experience defending territory
or investment in the pair bond. I tracked and
recorded the songs of wrens in forests around
Princeton’s campus. I then converted these audio
recordings into spectrograms that allowed me to
visualize the frequency and duration of duets,
as well as how synchronized male and female
songs are. I compared duets in pairs containing
at least one adult to pairs consisting of only
year-old birds (hatch-years). I found that age did
not impact duet coordination, but in new pairs,
duets became slightly more coordinated over a
short period of time. My results shed light on the
possible functions and evolutionary explanations
for duetting behavior in Carolina wrens, and I
proposed that non-adaptive hypotheses based on
the evolutionary lineage of the species are worthy
of consideration.
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