Latitude and longitude were correlated, so to avoid multicollinearity we used the first principal component of these two variables as our geographic factor. This principal component explained 84% of the variance in latitude and longitude. We used the same model to test for elevation effects on each of the three song features by removing the geographic

factor and replacing it with elevation values for the site of each recording. We ran these three tests separately from the previous three because the geographic factor was correlated with elevation. All statistics were performed in jmp version 9.0 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA, MEK inhibitor 2010). All measured songs were discrete and brief with breaks between songs lasting at least 1 s. All birds sang songs that included one or two introductory

note types, followed by a more complex end phrase that often ran into a trill (Figs 2-4). Selleck Y-27632 Songs with two different introductory note types were rare, and 87% of songs included only two syllable types: an introductory note repeated up to six times, followed by an end phrase that was sometimes repeated more than once. We observed three general introductory note types: (1) a descending frequency sweep (46 birds); (2) a broadband buzz (32 birds); (3) a harmonic stack (5 birds) (Fig. 2). Nineteen birds sang multiple introductory note types, with one singing all three introductory notes. Acoustically, these notes were not all identical among individuals, but were clearly identifiable to type. Song end phrases showed much more diversity in form than introductory notes (Fig. 3). We identified 77 end-phrase types. Of these, 42 were unique to single birds; the remaining 35 end phrases were shared by two to seven individuals each. Frequency characteristics of the three introductory note types, end phrases and whole songs are detailed in Table 1. In total, we identified 179 song types from the 61 recorded birds. The largest recorded repertoire

of an individual included 16 song types and 15 syllable types. Individuals typically sang with eventual variety. Longer recordings contained click here more song types (Appendix S1), and all recorded birds continued to produce new song and end-phrase types up to the end of each recording. Thus, we expect that more extensive sampling would discover more song types from every individual. Song bouts may include a wide variety of song forms generated by altering (1) the type of introductory note; (2) the number of repetitions of the introductory note; (3) the type of end phrase; (4) the number of repetitions of the end phrase; (5) the addition of a third note type (Fig. 4). On a local scale, songs were highly varied: multiple tracks (n = 2–4) from nine common locations did not show evidence of song sharing by neighbours.