Evolution of leaf warbler songs (Aves: Phylloscopidae) Dieter Thomas Tietze1,2, Jochen Martens3, Balduin S. Fischer1, Yue-Hua Sun4, Annette Klussmann-Kolb1,5 & Martin Packert€ 6 1Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe University, Max-von-Laue-Straße 13, 60439 Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 364, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany 3Institute of Zoology, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55099 Mainz, Germany 4Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101 Beijing, China 5Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Adenauerallee 160, 53113 Bonn, Germany 6Senckenberg Natural History Collections, Museum of Zoology, Konigsbr€ ucker€ Landstraße 159, 01109 Dresden, Germany Keywords Abstract Model of evolution, Phylloscopus, phylogenetic signal, Seicercus, song Songs in passerine birds are important for territory defense and mating. Specia- evolution. tion rates in oscine passerines are so high, due to cultural evolution, that this bird lineage makes up half of the extant bird species. Leaf warblers are a speci- Correspondence ose Old-World passerine family of limited morphological differentiation, so that Dieter Thomas Tietze, Institute of Pharmacy songs are even more important for species delimitation. We took 16 sonograph- and Molecular Biotechnology, Heidelberg ic traits from song recordings of 80 leaf warbler taxa and correlated them with University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 364, 69120 15 potentially explanatory variables, pairwise, and in linear models. Based on a Heidelberg, Germany. Tel: + 49 6241 6944571; Fax: + 49 6221 54- well-resolved molecular phylogeny of the same taxa, all pairwise correlations 4884; E-mail:
[email protected] were corrected for relatedness with phylogenetically independent contrasts and phylogenetic generalized linear models were used.