Blackbirds sing higher-pitched songs in cities: adaptation to habitat acoustics or side-effect of urbanization?

When animals colonize cities they often have to adapt their physiology, life history and behaviour to the novel environment. Songbirds rely on acoustic communication for reproduction, and recent studies indicate that songs vary between urban and nonurban habitats. In cities, birds sing louder or use higher frequencies compared to their conspecifics in forests. These habitat-specific differences in song have been interpreted as an adaptation of the city birds to mitigate acoustic masking by low-frequency traffic noise. We compared the songs of blackbirds, Turdus merula, from the city centre of Vienna and the Vienna Woods and found that forest birds sang at lower frequencies and with longer intervals between songs. This difference in song pitch might reflect an adaptation to urban ambient noise. However, the song divergence could also be the result of more intense vocal interaction in the more densely populated city areas or a side-effect of physiological adaptation to urban habitats. We emphasize the need for experimental studies in blackbirds, but also in other species, to clarify a possible causal link between urban acoustics and song characteristics of city birds. (C) 2009 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.