Some animal vocalizations develop reliably in the absence of relevant experience, but an intriguing subset of animal vocalizations is learned: they require acoustic models during ontogeny in order to develop, and the learner's vocal output reflects those models. To what extent do such learned vocalizations reflect phylogeny? We compared the degree to which phylogenetic signal is present in vocal signals from a wide taxonomic range of birds, including both vocal learners (songbirds) and vocal non-learners. We used publically available molecular phylogenies and developed methods to analyse spectral and temporal features in a carefully curated collection of high-quality recordings of bird songs and bird calls, to yield acoustic distance measures. Our methods were initially developed using pairs of closely related North American and European bird species, and then applied to a non-overlapping random stratified sample of European birds. We found strong similarity in acoustic and genetic distances, which manifested itself as a significant phylogenetic signal, in both samples. In songbirds, both learned song and (mostly) unlearned calls allowed reconstruction of phylogenetic trees nearly isomorphic to the phylogenetic trees derived from genetic analysis. We conclude that phylogeny and inheritance constrain vocal structure to a surprising degree, even in learned birdsong.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.

一些动物发声在缺乏相关经验的情况下可靠地发展，但学习了一个有趣的动物发声子集：它们在个体发育过程中需要声学模型才能发展，而学习者的声音输出反映了这些模型。这种习得的发声在多大程度上反映了系统发育？我们比较了来自广泛分类范围的鸟类的声音信号中存在系统发育信号的程度，包括声音学习者（鸣禽）和声音非学习者。我们使用公开可用的分子系统发育和开发的方法来分析精心策划的高质量鸟鸣和鸟叫录音集合中的光谱和时间特征，以产生声学距离测量。我们的方法最初是使用成对的密切相关的北美和欧洲鸟类开发的，然后应用于欧洲鸟类的非重叠随机分层样本。我们发现两个样本中的声学距离和遗传距离具有很强的相似性，这表现为显着的系统发育信号。在鸣禽中，习得的歌声和（大部分）未习得的叫声都允许重建与遗传分析得出的系统发育树几乎同构的系统发育树。我们得出的结论是，系统发育和遗传在令人惊讶的程度上限制了声音结构，即使在习得的鸟鸣中也是如此。在两个样本中。在鸣禽中，习得的歌声和（大部分）未习得的叫声都允许重建与遗传分析得出的系统发育树几乎同构的系统发育树。我们得出的结论是，系统发育和遗传在令人惊讶的程度上限制了声音结构，即使在习得的鸟鸣中也是如此。在两个样本中。在鸣禽中，习得的歌声和（大部分）未习得的叫声都允许重建与遗传分析得出的系统发育树几乎同构的系统发育树。我们得出的结论是，系统发育和遗传在令人惊讶的程度上限制了声音结构，即使在习得的鸟鸣中也是如此。

这篇文章是主题问题“动物和人类的声音学习”的一部分。