Protein-Rich Food Does Not Affect Singing Behaviour and Song Quality in Adult Zebra Finches, Taeniopygia guttata

This study investigated whether short-term protein supplement to the seed-only diet during adulthood would impact the production and song features in male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). In singly housed adult male zebra finches provided daily with seeds as food without or with 1 g of egg white protein supplement (equivalent to ~0.11 g egg proteins) under 12 h light : 12 h dark condition for 8 weeks, we recorded singing pattern at the beginning and end over 2 days when a female conspecific shared his cage. We found no effect of the egg protein supplement on daily song production, song bout duration and motifs per bout as well as the spectral features of the song, viz. motif duration, amplitude, pitch, goodness, mean frequency, frequency modulation, amplitude modulation or entropy. Perhaps, as sexually selected trait, song quality is not directly related to body metabolism. It is likely that seeds provided met energy requirement for vocalization (song production), and so additional egg white protein supplement did not affect the singing behaviour in adult zebra finches.