Large-scale geographic variation in songs of Gambel's White-crowned Sparrows

An earlier study failed to find dialects in the songs of male Gambel's Whitecrowned Sparrow, (Zonotrichia lettcophrys gambelii in Alaska. We recorded songs of males at five localities over a much greater portion of the Subspecies' range, spanning 2250 km east to west and 1650 km north to south. On this scale, distinct geographical variants are evident, based on the song's terminal phrase and the line detail, of other phrases. In Whitecrowned Sparrow,, the extent of dialects is apparently positively correlated with the distance migrated by the subspecies: a demographic variable such as survivorship or nasal philopatry likely results in this link.