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Skip to Search Results- 1Arteaga Torres, Josue
- 1Avey, Marc
- 1Campbell, Kimberley Ann
- 1Congdon, Jenna V.
- 1Guillette, Lauren M
- 1Hahn, Allison H
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The Neural Encoding of Heterospecific Vocalizations in the Avian Pallium: An Ethological Approach
DownloadFall 2011
Songbirds (order Passeriformes, suborder Oscines) have captured the attention of scientists and non-scientists alike with their vocal signals. The black-capped chickadee (genus Poecile) uses its namesake call, chick-a-dee, to convey a variety of information. In Chapter 2 and 3, I examine the...
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Discrimination of musical intervals by humans and chickadees: Cue salience modulated by timbre
DownloadFall 2013
Musical consonance/dissonance, roughly defined by its characteristic stability/instability, has been shown to be a relatively salient feature of sound. The extent to which the salience of this property varies as a function of timbre, a property that distinguishes two sounds of the same pitch and...
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Pitch perception in vocal learners: Fundamental shared components of pitch processing and biological relevance
DownloadSpring 2013
Pitch perception is important in both music and language perception in humans. Vocal learners, including humans, share the property of learning their vocalizations from a tutor when young. Similar behavioural and neural mechanisms underlying vocal production among different species of vocal...
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Information contained within a simple acoustic signal: The fee-bee song of the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
DownloadFall 2015
Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) are a common North American songbird that produce numerous types of vocalizations with various functions. The vocal repertoire of black-capped chickadees have been the focus of numerous vocal production and perception studies. Black-capped chickadees...
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Animal cognition and animal personality: Individual differences in exploratory behaviour, learning, vocal output, and hormonal response in an avian model
DownloadFall 2012
The foremost goal of this thesis is to integrate the study of animal cognition with the field of animal personality. In the early 20th century, Pavlov integrated these fields by describing an interaction between associative learning and dogs that exhibited different behavioural types. Since...
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The perception, structure, and function of female song in the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
DownloadFall 2021
The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is a non-migratory songbird found throughout North America who communicates primarily through its numerous vocalizations, each with various functions. The vocalizations of the black-capped chickadee can be divided into calls and songs. Calls serve...
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An investigation of sex differences in acoustic features of the chick-a-dee call of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)
DownloadFall 2015
The chick-a-dee call of the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is composed of four main note types (A, B, C, and D) that occur in a fixed order. Sex differences have been identified in a number of black-capped chickadee vocalizations (including tseet calls and fee-bee songs) and in the...
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Chickadee behavioural response to varying threat levels of heterospecific and conspecific calls
DownloadFall 2015
Chickadees produce many vocalizations, including the chick-a-dee call that they use as a mobbing call in the presence of predators. Previous research has shown that chickadees produce more D notes in their mobbing calls in response to high-threat predators compared to low-threat predators, and...
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Investigating the value of incorporating behavioural measures in a discriminant function developed for sex assignment in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)
DownloadFall 2021
Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) are a sexually monomorphic species that typically require molecular assays or observation of sex-specific behaviours in the breeding season for accurate sex assignment. We developed a discriminant function in a central Albertan chickadee population...
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Fall 2010
Urbanization is viewed as a major threat to global biodiversity because of its role in the loss and fragmentation of low-lying, productive habitats associated with coastal plains and river valleys. My study examines the effects of urbanization on the movements and distribution of songbirds in...