Corvids are a key model-system to study animal behaviour and cognition. Still our understanding of the evolution of vocal complexity and cognitive processes underlying communication is limited. This meeting will bring together researchers from the fields of animal behaviour, bioacoustics, cognition, computer sciences and conservation to update on recent advances and develop key future directions.

A comparative understanding of how particular behavioural and cognitive processes have evolved in distantly related taxa is key to further understand evolutionary drivers of behaviour. In the field of vocal communication, research has mostly focussed on birds because of their vocal learning capacity and non-human primates due to their phylogenetic proximity with humans. Both models are key to understand the evolution of complex communicative systems . Among birds, corvids (e.g., ravens, crows, jays and magpies) are a key taxonomic group, that have been the most studied for their cognitive abilities. Corvids occupy a large diversity of environments, and their social systems can vary in complexity and in the number of social bonds individuals maintain, which, according to the socio -complexity hypothesis, could influence the vocal complexity of species. Despite more than 40 years of research on the behaviour and cognition of corvids, their potential value as an alternative model to primates in understanding the evolution of complex communication has only emerged recently. Corvids have particularly rich non-song repertoires and are open-ended vocal learners, which means they can acquire new calls throughout their lives, not only in a specific sensitive period. In few species, vocalisations have been described to be socially learned from conspecifics, which is linked to cultural variation and some species have been reported to mimic heterospecific sounds. Several species of corvids can produce complex, individual sets of call repertoires and their calls encode individual characteristics. Understanding and measuring the various characteristics of vocal complexity in corvid vocal production as well as perception of signals could be key to further understand the evolution of sociality as well as complex cognition in different taxa. Further, understanding of vocal communication can also aid conservation efforts for species of conservation concern, such as the Hawaiian crow or ʻalalā (Corvus hawaiiensis), that is currently extinct in the wild. For example, by monitoring populations but also providing predator training to individuals prior to release. In the past, research progress on vocal communication in corvids was insular, focussing on selected species and topics. In the proposed Scientific Meeting and Special Issue, we aim to synthesize current knowledge and develop a joint vision for the future direction of research on evolutionary drivers of vocal complexity and cognitive underpinnings of vocal communication.

Conference proceedings will be published as a special collection in Animal Cognition.
Link to article collection