CES President’s Report & Annual General Meeting

**Author(s):** Mitchell, M; Hudson, E; Creanza, N Introduction 
In vocal-learning songbirds, song has been suggested to reinforce behavioral reproductive barriers between closely related species; this process may help facilitate speciation. Other explanations for song divergence are that songs would gradually accumulate random changes through drift, that morphological changes in birds would lead to changes in song features, or that sound-transmission properties of the local environment would lead to song differences between populations in different habitats.
 Approach
Here we test these competing hypotheses by analyzing 2726 community-science recordings of 42 species (21 sister species pairs) in the Passerellidae family of sparrows, using song-analysis software we developed. 
 Results
We found that geographic overlap was significantly associated with the degree to which sister species could be reliably distinguished by analyzing their song properties, and several song traits were found to evolve faster in sister species with range overlap than those without.
 Conclusions
Our results provide evidence that increased rates of cultural evolution could be a mechanism for population differentiation in songbirds.

Can cultural evolution facilitate speciation in songbirds?

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Cultural Evolution Society Conference 2024

The field of cultural evolution is growing in size and scope; its theories, methods and applications - both academic and applied - are getting ever more robust. Do join us in what promises to be an exciting exchange of ideas and a celebration of our field.

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Cultural evolution in non-human taxa 1

technical paper

### Welcome to the fourth Cultural Evolution Society Conference, CES2022! 

As last year, Underline will support the online component of the conference. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is causing a great deal of uncertainty for all of us. Therefore, we seek to offer a hybrid format that will hopefully allow some folks to travel to Aarhus, others to meet up locally or regionally in CES hub-lets, and other yet to participate online. The field of cultural evolution is growing in size and scope; its theories, methods and applications - both academic and applied - are getting ever more robust. Do join us in what promises to be an exciting exchange of ideas and a celebration of our field.

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#### The CES 2022 local organising committee
* Luseadra Joy McKerracher
* Jesper Sørensen 
* Niels Nørkjær Johannsen 
* Benjamin Grant Purzycki 
* Mette Løvschal 
* Felix Riede
* Iza Romanowska 
* Karsten Olsen

Nicole Creanza

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CES President’s Report & Annual General Meeting

Can cultural evolution facilitate speciation in songbirds?

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