Social experiences shape song preference learning independent of developmental exposure to song

Abstract

Communication governs the formation and maintenance of social relationships. The interpretation of communication signals depends not only on the signals content, but also on a receivers individual experience. Experiences throughout life may interact to affect behavioral plasticity, such that a lack of developmental sensory exposure could constrain adult learning, while salient adult social experiences could remedy developmental deficits. We investigated how experiences impact the formation and direction of female auditory preferences in the zebra finch. Zebra finches form long-lasting pair bonds and females learn preferences for their mates vocalizations. We found that after two weeks of cohabitation with a male, females formed pair-bonds and learned to prefer their mates song regardless of whether they were reared with ("normally-reared") or without ("song-naive") developmental exposure to song. In contrast, females that heard but did not physically interact with a male did not prefer his song. Moreover, even following mating, song-naive females failed to show species-typical preferences for courtship song, hinting that mating is insufficient to ameliorate broader deficits in sensory processing that arise during development. Thus, courtship and mating interactions, but not acoustic-only interactions, strongly influence preference learning regardless of rearing experience, and may dynamically drive auditory plasticity for recognition and preference.