Microgeographic Variation in the Song of the Sage Sparrow

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Abstract
The sage sparrow breeds in large expanses of continuous sagebrush in southern Idaho [USA]. Analyses of the song syllables and shared syllable sequences of 40 males from 5 main study sites in Idaho revealed that individuals tended to be most similar to birds from the same population. Each male had 1 stereotyped song with only minor variations consisting of the omission of a few syllables from the end of the song. Three males apparently had the same song and same or nearly the same territory for 3 or 4 yr. The most geographically distant population from the other 4 populations had the most distinct songs. Neighbors on adjacent territories were not usually most similar to each other. Several syllables were widespread among males while uncommon syllables were often shared among males within a population. Stepwise discriminant analysis of 10 variables from the same populations revealed that mean syllable duration and mean interval between syllables contained enough information to successfully assign 62.5% of the songs to the population to which they belonged. Six of an additional 10 songs recorded at 5 other sites in southern Idaho were classified into the main population geographically closest.