Bird songs are acoustic communication signals primarily used in male-male aggression and in male-female attraction. These are often monotonous patterns composed of a few phrases, yet some birds have ...extremely complex songs with a large phrase repertoire, organized in non-random fashion with discernible patterns. Since structure is typically associated with function, the structures of complex bird songs provide important clues to the evolution of animal communication systems. Here we propose an efficient network-based approach to explore structural design principles of complex bird songs, in which the song networks--transition relationships among different phrases and the related structural measures--are employed. We demonstrate how this approach works with an example using California Thrasher songs, which are sequences of highly varied phrases delivered in succession over several minutes. These songs display two distinct features: a large phrase repertoire with a 'small-world' architecture, in which subsets of phrases are highly grouped and linked with a short average path length; and a balanced transition diversity amongst phrases, in which deterministic and non-deterministic transition patterns are moderately mixed. We explore the robustness of this approach with variations in sample size and the amount of noise. Our approach enables a more quantitative study of global and local structural properties of complex bird songs than has been possible to date.
"I Don't Feel Hate" Barbara Hornberger
Persona Studies,
05/2024, Volume:
10, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In (media) popular music, “personas” are usually media personalities. They mainly appear in mass media. As the media landscape has changed over the last 150 years, so have the media appearances of ...these musician-personalities - from sheet music to radio, records, film, television, music videos and finally YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Popular music is dominated by stars, media personalities who present a musical performance - but the way this performance is presented has varied historically. In “old” media, record companies had considerable power with regard to access to markets, but also regarding production, marketing and perpetuation of star images. This has changed dramatically with the rise of the internet and various social media platforms. Now potentially everyone has access, everyone can present oneself publicly, everyone can have his or her “15 minutes of fame” (Andy Warhol). The article describes these transformations to the principle of stardom using a case study: the creation of the German entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam 2021. The previously unknown singer Jendrik Sigwart talks about his application on TikTok and in particular about the production of a music video for it. His application on TikTok for one of Europe’s oldest TV events is an interesting moment in media history, in which old narrative strategies mix with new ones.
Felsic extrusive rocks are widely distributed in the western region of Thanh Hoa, primarily comprising rhyolite and rhyolitic tuff formations. They show porphyritic textures, and are composed of ...15–25% phenocrysts and 75–85% groundmass. Phenocrysts are mainly euhedral–subhedral plagioclase (5-10 vol.%), K-feldspar (5-10 vol.%) and quartz (5-10 vol.%). The groundmass consists of plagioclase (30-45 vol.%), K-feldspar (25-40 vol.%), quartz (30-40 vol.%), and minor biotite with random distribution. In terms of geological context, these extrusive rocks overlie Silurian-Devonian sequences of sandstone and siltstone interbedded with shale and limestone lenses, and were intruded by the Early Triassic granite of the Song Ma complex. Zircons selected from rhyolite were LA-ICP-MS U-Pb dated, yielding an age of 253 Ma. This age is the timing of the magma crystallization, corresponding to the Late Permian - Early Triassic Indosinian tectonomagmatic event. These findings together with historical study results, prove that the Indosinian magmatic event widely occurred in the Truong Son belt, the Song Ma domain and the Kon Tum area. The eruption of the rhyolite is linked to the amalgamation between the South China and Indochina blocks.
The mating decisions of Drosophila melanogaster females are primarily revealed through either of two discrete actions: opening of the vaginal plates to allow copulation, or extrusion of the ...ovipositor to reject the male. Both actions are triggered by the male courtship song, and both are dependent upon the female’s mating status. Virgin females are more likely to open their vaginal plates in response to song; mated females are more likely to extrude their ovipositor. Here, we examine the neural cause and behavioral consequence of ovipositor extrusion. We show that the DNp13 descending neurons act as command-type neurons for ovipositor extrusion, and that ovipositor extrusion is an effective deterrent only when performed by females that have previously mated. The DNp13 neurons respond to male song via direct synaptic input from the pC2l auditory neurons. Mating status does not modulate the song responses of DNp13 neurons, but rather how effectively they can engage the motor circuits for ovipositor extrusion. We present evidence that mating status information is mediated by ppk+ sensory neurons in the uterus, which are activated upon ovulation. Vaginal plate opening and ovipositor extrusion are thus controlled by anatomically and functionally distinct circuits, highlighting the diversity of neural decision-making circuits even in the context of closely related behaviors with shared exteroceptive and interoceptive inputs.
Display omitted
•Mated Drosophila females extrude their ovipositors to reject courting males•The DNp13 descending neurons are command neurons for ovipositor extrusion•DNp13 neurons respond to male courtship song via pC2l auditory neurons•Ovulation, triggered by a prior mating, enhances DNp13 motor output
After an initial mating, female flies often reject courtship from other males. Here, Wang et al. characterize the neural circuitry that controls a specific rejection behavior, ovipositor extrusion. Ovipositor extrusion occurs in response to a male’s courtship song, provided the female has ovulated as a consequence of a previous mating.
Food availability is a major evolutionary force that has direct effects on an individual’s body condition. Since sexually selected traits are often condition-dependent, they are likely to reflect ...food availability or other ecological constraints. Here we test whether bird song, which is thought to be under intense female choice, is sensitive to food availability and might be used by females to assess male body condition and/or territory quality. We manipulated food availability of male zebra finches (
Taeniopygia guttata
) and assessed the within-individual effects of the treatment on song parameters that are thought to be important in mate choice. We found no effect of food availability on syllable repertoire, proportion of sound versus silence within a song, and mean song frequency. In contrast, treatment birds showed a reduced song rate, an increased latency to sing, and a lowered song amplitude and fundamental frequency. Our study demonstrates that zebra finch song reflects food availability and that songs of well-fed males contain traits that have previously been reported to be more attractive to females. This adds strong support to the general assumption that female song preferences evolved because song reflects male quality and/or territory quality. Moreover, our study provides corroborative evidence for the notion that variation in environmental factors plays an important role in the evolution of mating signals.
The Cologne dialect: Development trends Mokrova, Natalia I.
Izvestiâ Saratovskogo universiteta. Novaâ seriâ. Seriâ Filologiâ. Žurnalistika (Online),
03/2022, Volume:
22, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The article studies the Cologne dialect in the process of its historical development. The current state of the dialect is notable for a wide and in different ways varied range of regional, social, ...functional and stylistic layers (levels) in close coordination with one another. Notably, this system is not stable, it constantly changes under the influence of the social, technical, cultural, historical and other factors. The research on language change often disregards the dialect material featuring prominently in the historical context of linguistics. The article focuses on the changes in the Cologne dialect which have taken place in the last decades. The research is based on dialect songs of carnival performers in the Cologne dialect. This dialect, spoken in the city and surrounding areas, is much more than a language variety. It has close associations with cultural events and especially with the carnival. The song texts in Cologne dialect of two carnival exponents are used as the practical material for the study and comparison of the most characteristic phonetic and grammatical properties of the Cologne dialect. In the course of their linguistic analysis from the beginning of the 20th century up to now, it has been determined that the Cologne dialect has undergone some changes; however, there is no clear trend towards moving closer to the standard German. The conclusions offer an insight into the current state of the regional language variant and the relationships between the dialect and the standard German language.
Checco Zalone is one of the most important phenomena of Italian Cinema of the last decades. One of the constants of his cinema is the presence of the song-form, in particular of original songs ...(original soundtrack), used as a mean to transit from the theatre, radio and TV to the cinema: this paper constitutes a sociosemiotic, interdisciplinary and culturalist analysis of the different expressive modalities with which Zalone makes use of his songs, that become a configuration element of his own style, representing a specific cinematographic way and strengthening Zalone’s authorial role in his cinema in a complex and considerable way.
Whole-genome-level comparisons of sister taxa that vary in phenotype against a background of high genomic similarity can be used to identify the genomic regions that might underlie their phenotypic ...differences. In wild birds, this exploratory approach has detected markers associated with plumage coloration, beak and wing morphology, and complex behavioral traits like migration. Here, we use genomic comparisons of two closely related suboscine flycatchers (Empidonax difficilis and E. occidentalis) and their hybrids to search for candidate genes underlying their variation in innate vocal signals. We sequenced the genomes of 20 flycatchers that sang one of two species-specific pure song types and 14 putative hybrid individuals with intermediate song types. In the resulting genomic comparisons, we found six areas of high differentiation that may be associated with variation in nonlearned songs. These narrow regions of genomic differentiation contain a total of 67 described genes, of which three have been previously associated with forms of language impairment and dyslexia in humans and 18 are known to be differentially expressed in the song nuclei regions of the avian brain compared with adjacent parts of the avian brain. This "natural experiment" therefore may help identify loci associated with song differences that merit further study across bird lineages with both learned and innate vocalizations.
Love, and the different manifestations of it, is a common theme in literature around the world. In Cosmopolitan Love , Sijia Yao examines the writings of D. H. Lawrence, a British writer whose ...literature focused primarily on interpersonal relationships in domestic settings, and Eileen Chang, a Chinese writer who migrated to the United States and explored Chinese heterosexual love in her writing. While comparing the writings of a Chinese writer and an English one, Yao avoids a direct comparison between East and West that could further enforce binaries. Instead, she uses the comparison to develop an idea of cosmopolitanism that shows how the writers are in conversation with their own culture and with each other. Both D. H. Lawrence and Eileen Chang wrote stories that are influenced by—but sometimes stand in opposition to—their own cultures. They offer alternative understandings of societies dealing with modernism and cultural globalization. Their stories deal with emotional pain caused by the restrictions of local politics and economics and address common themes of incestuous love, sexual love, adulterous love, and utopian love. By analyzing their writing, Yao demonstrates that the concept of love as a social and political force can cross cultural boundaries and traditions to become a basis for human meaning, the key to a cosmopolitan vision.
We are now witnessing a great renewal of philosophical interest in the material aspects of religiosity. In this article I show that we have resources for this work in the very late philosophy of Paul ...Ricoeur, resources that are equally unexpected and deeply moving. In particular, in Ricoeur’s late turn we see the promising beginnings of a sacramental philosophy that links Baptism and the Song of Songs to show how liturgical practice is fundamentally tied to the beauty and sacredness of the natural world. The result is the realization that an ethics of hope is only truly completed in a philosophy of praise, eschatology pointing toward doxology.
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