Proyecto de grado / Erasmus con aves en Chequia

The evolution of species recognition in passerines – experimental evidence

In birds, most speciation events are caused by a geographic barrier leading to the differentiation of separated populations. Once the barrier is gone, incipient species might meet and individuals interact. To reduce costly hybridization, divergence in traits (typically vocal and/or visual) used for the recognition of emerging species can be expected. Your task will be to find published experiments that used playbacks of songs, sometimes together with the presentation of dummy birds, to test experimentally species recognition. This review of literature should summarize what methods previous studies used and what results they obtained. The literature review should also generate questions for further research. It can also be followed up by experimental work in the field conducting behavioral experiments with the design informed by the conclusions of your review.

The project is suitable for Erasmus internship training or bachelor thesis.If interested, please contact Vladimír Remeš (vlad.remes@gmail.com) or Tereza Petrusková (kumstatova@post.cz)