Individual identity information is obscured post laboratory colony assembly in black-capped chickadees
Description
We hypothesized that lab-housed black capped chickadees would be able to discriminate calls between two established lab colonies, and would perceive a change from pre-to-post colony assembly, as an indication of vocal plasticity. While birds did not demonstrate colony-based discrimination, we suggest the birds instead employed individual-based discrimination. Furthermore, while high individual discrimination accuracy was maintained for pre-assembly calls, discrimination accuracy dropped significantly for post-assembly calls. We suggest that vocal plasticity, specifically call convergence, altered the acoustic features of individuals' calls, impeding individual discrimination. Attached are each bird's data for each day of the study. Within each bird's folder (bird's ID and group denoted as G1, G2, or Pseudo in first file within each folder), TXT. files are named by date and stage.