​Project: Individual- and population-level variation in songs of the White-bellied Sholakili (Sholicola albiventris)
Description:  The White-bellied sholakili is a highly vocal bird often found in the understory of the Shola Sky Islands of the Western Ghats. The uniqueness of this bird's vocalisation lies in the high degree of variability in their song at the individual as well as population level. Through this project, we seek to find answers at both these levels:

At the individual level, we first look at ways to quantify song complexity levels. We generated a new metric - the Note Variability Index (NVI) - that captures intra-song note-level spectro-temporal variation using spectrogram cross-correlation and generates a complexity score. We tested this metric across birds worldwide with songs of varying complexity. This work can be accessed at Sawant et al.,(2022)
The sholakili is believed to have several hundred types of notes, all shared between members of a population (Suyash Sawant Masters thesis). We currently have a population that has been monitored since 2019 for songs. We examine intra-individual song variability across years and the degree of song sharing between neighbouring individuals across years. Another question we are exploring is whether such a highly complex song is an indicator of male quality or the fitness of an individual. 

Within a population, we derive sholakili population-level song signatures across its distribution gradient. We then look at the cultural dialects in songs across relatively isolated populations in conjunction with genetic connectivity derived from Next Generation Sequencing data. We further explore how landscape and environmental configurations in the landscape lead to a relationship between the cultural transmission of songs and genetic connectivity across populations. 
Publications:
  • Sawant, S., Arvind, C., Joshi, V., & Robin, V. V. (2022). Spectrogram cross‐correlation can be used to measure the complexity of bird vocalizations. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13(2), 459-472.
  • Sawant, S., Arvind, C., Joshi, V., & Robin, V. V. (2021). Song Richness Index: A measure to understand the diversity and repetition of notes in a birdsong. bioRxiv, 2021-12.
Presentations:
  • Talk – Suyash Sawant, Chiti Arvind, Viral Joshi, Indranil Dutta, V. V. Robin. Can we monitor individual birds using acoustics? A case study of White-bellied Sholakili. Symposium on Bird Monitoring in India. Mar 2023.
  • Talk – Chiti Arvind, Suyash Sawant, VV Robin. Cultural variation in songs of an endemic bird in the Shola Sky Islands of the Western Ghats in India. Indian Society for Evolutionary Biologists, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Feb 2023.
  • Poster – Suyash Sawant, Chiti Arvind, Viral Joshi, Indranil Dutta, V. V. Robin. Do neighbors influence an individual's singing? A case study of song sharing in White-bellied Sholakili. Animal Behavior Live- Annual Online Conference. Nov 2022. Virtual poster n°27 - Suyash Sawant
  • Poster – Chiti Arvind, Suyash Sawant, VV Robin. Cultural variation in songs in a bird endemic to the Shola Sky Islands of the Western Ghats of India. National Symposium on Avian Biology, Gaya, Bihar. Nov 2022. [First prize for the best poster]
  • Talk – Suyash Sawant, Chiti Arvind, Viral Joshi, Indranil Dutta, V. V. Robin. Examining song sharing in highly territorial White-bellied Sholakili Sholicola albiventris. National Symposium on Avian Biology, Gaya, Bihar. Nov 2022.
  • Poster – Suyash Sawant, Chiti Arvind, Viral Joshi, V. V. Robin. Individual song variation and song sharing in the White-bellied Sholakili Sholicola albiventris. Animal Behavior Live- Annual Online Conference. Nov 2021. Virtual poster n°30 - Suyash Sawant 
  • Talk – Suyash Sawant, Chiti Arvind, Viral Joshi, V. V. Robin. Spectrogram cross-correlation can be used to measure the complexity of bird vocalizations. National Symposium on Avian Biology 2021. Haridwar, Uttarakhand. Mar 2021.
  • Poster – Chiti Arvind, Harikrishnan CP, Amrutha Rajan, Suyash Sawant, Shomita Mukherjee, P Jeganathan, Viral Joshi, V. V. Robin. Bioacoustics to explain birdsong complexity and bird diversity.  'A day of life', Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Feb 2020.
  • Talk - Chiti Arvind, Suyash Sawant, Viral Joshi, V. V. Robin. Exploring birdsong complexity in the White-bellied sholakili across 10 years. National Symposium on Avian Biology, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Dec 2019.
  • Poster – Suyash Sawant, Chiti Arvind, Viral Joshi, V. V. Robin. Defining birdsong complexity in a species with a highly variable vocal repertoire. National Symposium on Avian Biology, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Dec 2019. [Third prize for the best poster] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.28018.66249
Study site: The Shola Sky Islands in the Western Ghats, >1400m ASL in the Anamalai - Palani plateau.
Fundings:  Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB)
Team:
Collaborators: 
Prof. Indranil Dutta - Jadavpur University

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