What immediate, rapid behavioral evolution occurred in San Francisco sparrows following the COVID-19 pandemic noise drop?
Answer
They quickly reverted songs back to the original, lower pitch
Behavioral traits, such as song dialect, show rapid evolutionary plasticity in response to environmental stimuli. In the San Francisco area, White-crowned Sparrows had adapted to singing at higher pitches to overcome masking by heavy urban traffic noise. When traffic noise significantly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, the sparrows rapidly demonstrated immediate behavioral evolution by adjusting their vocalizations back to their original, lower pitch, illustrating how quickly communication signals can respond to changes in the acoustic environment.
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