Talk:Song sparrow

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Michael.stankov.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:48, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
This page would benefit from a few more lines on ssp. Cornell Birds of North America has refs for amaka & graminea probably invalid. Dysmorodrepanis 20:23, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Passerellidae
Why not in family Passerellidae? See Passerellidae at Bird taxonomy in flux for a summer of modern systematics research in the area. DCDuring (talk) 16:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Physiology
Hello, My name is Michael and I am a student at the University of Connecticut. Over the next few weeks I will be working on a class assignment through the Wikipedia foundation where I help to improve upon articles on species physiology. I intend to do this work for M. melodia and will be using the following sources to do so.

Wingfield, John C (1993). "Control of Testicular cycles in the song sparrow, Melospiza melodia,melodia: Interaction of photoperiod and an endogenous program". General and Comparative Endocrinology 92: 388-401.

Greenberg, R. and Danner, R.M (2012). "The influence of the California marine layer on bill size in a generalist songbird". Evolution, 66: 3825: 3835

Environmental Physiology of Animals by Pat Wilmer, Graham Stone, and Ian Johnston. Wiley 2009 ISBN 9781405107242.

Michael.stankov (talk) 21:49, 2 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I've finished up my physiology section and will be adding it to the article by the end of the week, along with a slew of minor edits that clean up the grammar of the article. I've decided to post my major change here for comments.

Physiology
The song sparrow has been the subject of several studies detailing the physiological reactions of bird species to conditions such as daylight length and differing climatic conditions. Most birds gain mass in their reproductive organs in response to some signal, either internal or external as the breeding season approaches. The exact source of this signal varies from species to species - for some, it is an endogenous process separate from environmental cues, while other species require extensive external signals of changing daylight length and temperature before beginning to increase the mass of their reproductive organs. Male specimens of M. melodia gain significant testicular mass in response both to changes in the daily photoperiod and as a result of endogenous chemical signals. Females also undergo significant ovarian growth in response to both photo-period and endogenous signals. In this way, M. melodia is amongst only a handful of birds that use both external and engodenous signalling to dictate their breeding season. Hormone levels in both males and females were found fluctuate throughout the breeding season, having very high levels in March and late April and then declining until May. These studies suggest that there are multiple factors at work that influence when and how the song sparrow breeds other than just increasing day length.

Due to the myriad subspecies of the song sparrow and the extremely varied climate of southern California, where many of these subspecies make their homes, physiological studies were undertaken to determine how climatic conditions and local environment influenced the bill size of M. melodia subspecies. The bill of a bird is highly important for thermoregulation as the bare surface area makes a perfect place to radiate excess heat or absorb solar energy to maintain homeostasis. Knowing this, comparisons of bill length between individual song sparrows collected in different habitats were made with regard to the primary habitat type or microclimate that they were collected in. Larger beaked subspecies were strongly correlated with hotter microclimates - a correlation that follows from the conditions of Allen's Rule.

Sources have been copied over appropriately. Michael.stankov (talk) 21:13, 1 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The references didn't copy over because you copied them using the VisualEditor, which doesn't work on talk pages. Click on the [Edit source] button and copy over the wikicode - that way you should get everything to copy over. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:20, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Beethoven?
How could Beethoven have included phrases similar to the Song Sparrow's song in his music? The Song Sparrow has no range in Europe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aythya affinis (talk • contribs) 15:17, 12 November 2021 (UTC)