Adapting to unpredictable environments: Social organization and communication in zebra finches in the wild

Animals make behavioural decisions to cope with environmental uncertainty. A key adaptation for such uncertainty is to organize socially and spatially to maintain partnerships, reproduce, and survive. Yet, much of our understanding of such behavioural adaptations is derived from model organisms living under relatively predictable environments in the temperate zone. These insights are difficult to generalize to environments that are less predictable, and where annual cues do not predict good conditions. Therefore, species that have evolved in less predictable environments provide powerful opportunities to determine how animal societies are organized socially and spatially under challenging conditions. The zebra finch Taeniopygia castanosis, is an ideal model to fill this gap as they live in multi-level societies in arid Australia with unpredictable climate. Yet, while they are the best-studied songbird in captivity, little is known about their natural social organization. Moreover, the male song is the focus of hundreds of these lab-based studies, but little is known about the context and thus function of male song in the wild. Here, I will show results from our research in the Australian Outback on their movements and social organization, using a large automated radio-tracking setup as well as from our research on male singing, which is soft and mainly occurs outside a mating an breeding context. The findings on communication and social organization provide novel insights in the social life of birds and specifically the prime laboratory species in avian acoustics, the zebra finch. Their social organization differs strongly from how they are kept in laboratories and also their singing behaviour contrasts with the classical birdsong functions of mate attraction and territory defense, inviting us to broaden our view on the functions of birdsong in general.