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Keywords

Bachman's Sparrow song, geographical variation

Abstract

We present an analysis of geographic variation in primary song components of the Near Threatened North American endemic, Bachman’s Sparrow (Peucaea aestivalis). These songs have 2 distinct portions: an introductory tweet we call the "whistle" and a more complex second portion that we call the "trill". We analyzed 327 songs from 111 recordings downloaded from eBird.org from the entire current range of the species. We grouped the recordings into 3 distinct geographic clusters, East, Central, and West. The data measured from spectrograms suggest a significant statistical difference among groups for 3 measured characteristics: frequency range of trill, number of horizontal units per trill, and number of vertical parts per trill. No statistically significant differences were found in 7 characteristics: durations of a song, whistle, trill, and gap between songs, frequencies of whistle and trill, and quality of whistle.

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