Thorpe W H
Acta Neurobiol Exp (Wars). 1975;35(5-6):517-28.
Duetting plays a very important part in the signal system between male and female in a large number of bird species, in particular species that inhabit tropical regions. These elaborate song patterns show many interesting features, of which only a few have been discussed here. Perhaps the most interesting result of our investigations of duetting is the light cast on the heretofore little appreciated precision and synthesizing power of avian aural perception, the great precision of response time and the equally great exactness of control of the vocal organs. The use of these vocal powers for individual recognition is in line with observations made over the past decade by B. Tschanz, C. G. Beer, myself and others. This work has shown that in many colonial nesting birds (for example auks, terns, gulls, gannets and penguins) brief calls of a half-second duration or less can have enough acoustic detail not only to serve as labels identifying the calling species but also to label the individual caller.
二重唱在大量鸟类物种，特别是栖息在热带地区的物种的雌雄信号系统中起着非常重要的作用。这些精心设计的歌声模式展现出许多有趣的特征，这里只讨论了其中的少数几个。也许我们对二重唱研究最有趣的结果是，它揭示了鸟类听觉感知此前未得到充分重视的精确性和综合能力、反应时间的高度精确性以及对发声器官控制的同等精确性。利用这些发声能力进行个体识别与B. 察恩茨、C. G. 比尔、我本人以及其他人在过去十年所做的观察结果一致。这项研究表明，在许多群居筑巢的鸟类（例如海雀、燕鸥、海鸥、塘鹅和企鹅）中，持续时间半秒或更短的简短叫声不仅可以拥有足够的声学细节来作为识别鸣叫物种的标识，还能标识个体鸣叫者。
