Timing vocal behaviour: Experimental evidence for song overlap avoidance in Eurasian wrens

Timing during vocal interactions can play a significant role in terms of audibility as signal overlap may lead to masking of acoustic details for both of the interacting animals as well as for third-party eavesdroppers. Here we investigated timing aspects experimentally in Eurasian wrens (Troglodytes troglodytes) using non-interactive playback. We applied a randomized overlay method incorporating the temporal pattern of singing by the focal bird to establish a null model and to test observed patterns of overlap against this null model. We used different stimulus song rates but temporal response patterns always resulted in significantly lower levels of overlap than expected by chance. The male wrens avoided overlapping by timing their song starts predominately right after the end of stimulus songs, but they did not avoid being overlapped by the stimulus songs. The territorial males typically raised their song rates during and after playback with a tendency to shorten between-song intervals while keeping song durations unchanged. Higher song rates of the playback stimuli increased the extent to which responders were being overlapped by the stimulus songs. Our data provide experimental evidence for a timing ability in Eurasian wrens by which they reduce mutual interference during vocal interactions.