Abstract

Yellow-rumped Caciques (Cacicus cela vitellinus) in Panama had repertoires of around seven distinct song types that were shared among all male members of a breeding colony. During aggressive interactions among males, different song types were statistically associated with various behavioral contexts, including flying, beginning a song bout, supplanting, and following a pause in colony singing activity. Three general song classes contained structural analogs (song types sharing acoustic similarities) at twelve colonies. Both structural and functional properties of song types appeared to be widespread in the Isthmus of Panama. Given a song type, the conditional probabilities of associated behaviors were usually low (0.05 to 0.50). Individual songs were better predictors of nonaggressive behavior, such as flight and starting song bouts, than supplanting behavior. Cacique song types are better interpreted as attention attracting devices rather than as signals of agonistic intentions.

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