Song Bird Sparrows

[Kelly185891]

White-crowned sparrows in Alaska and Washington State sing different dialects. With the white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows, we have two closely related birds whose ranges overlap. If the songs of the birds evolved to prevent interspecific matings, what prediction follows about the similarities betweent the songs of related species that have overlapping versus nonoverlapping geographic distributions? Are there any analogies to what you observe in human behavior?

[Julie5]

"Are there any analogies to what you observe in human behavior?"

Yes, accent as a denoter of class. However 'socially mixed' a group is within a geographical location, each class will prefer to seek out and mate with those individuals of their own class, whom they can most easily idenitfy by their accent! (This is true in England, not sure if accent is such a signifier of class elsewhere! It's pretty overwhelming over here.... )