Figure 2. Learning outcomes are better when juveniles are tutored by their genetic fathers.

(A) Schematic representation of the experimental design. Parental pairs (middle row, blue birds) reared both their own genetic offspring (home-reared, left), and foster birds from different genetic backgrounds (cross-fostered, right). (B) Examples of learning outcomes for two nests. (B, top) Example songs from the resident male tutors in each nest. (B, middle, bottom) Example songs from birds that were either home-reared (B, middle) or cross-fostered (B, bottom) in nests where males sang the tutor songs indicated in B, top. The examples of learned songs are from birds that had the median Song Divergence (SD) scores for their cohort (home-reared or cross-fostered). Syllable labels are provided to facilitate comparisons, but do not reflect automated SD scores used to quantify song similarity. (C) Paired plot of median SD scores for home-reared and cross-fostered cohorts. Across eight nests, birds that were home-reared learned significantly better than birds that were cross-fostered (n = 8 parental pairs, 52 cross-fostered birds, 45 home-reared birds; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p<0.005). Median SD scores for nests corresponding to spectrograms in panel B are shown in red.

Figure 2—figure supplement 1. Pedigree of all tutor pairs used in cross-fostering experiments.

Squares indicate male birds while circles indicate female birds. Colored symbols indicate members of breeding pairs that were used as tutoring families for cross-foster experiments presented in Figure 2. Membership in a specific breeding pair is indicted by shared color and shared numbers. Triangle symbols indicate purchases from an outside vendor. A total of five purchases from outside vendors are indicated by numbers. Purchases were made over a period of 7 years ranging from 2001 to 2007.