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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences logoLink to Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
. 2004 Dec 7;271(Suppl 6):S409–S412. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0204

Sex-linked inheritance of hearing and song in the Belgian Waterslager canary.

Timothy F Wright 1, Elizabeth F Brittan-Powell 1, Robert J Dooling 1, Paul C Mundinger 1
PMCID: PMC1810118  PMID: 15801589

Abstract

Belgian Waterslager canaries have less sensitive hearing at high frequencies and produce songs with more energy at low frequencies than wild-type canaries. A backcross pedigree between Belgian Waterslager canaries and a domestic strain with wild-type song revealed inheritance patterns consistent with a factor of major effect located on the Z sex chromosome affecting both poor high-frequency hearing at 4 kHz and the relative energy in the spectra of the learned songs of males. Hearing thresholds at 4 kHz were significant predictors of the relative amount of song energy at 4 kHz for individual males. One hypothesis for the mechanistic basis of this correlation between hearing and song abnormalities is that a reduction in the ability to hear higher-frequency songs biases males towards learning lower-frequency songs.

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Selected References

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