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The lisping, dreamy song of a male Black-throated Green Warbler (Setophaga virens) is an intoxicating sound. But before it can reach the ear of a human and, more importantly, before it can be heard by a female Black-throated Green Warbler to elicit her response, the song must navigate a noisy path. In traveling through the forest, the song will experience inevitable degradation in transit, as the sound waves are distorted by leaves, branches, and many other obstacles. The song must also overcome interference from a variety of competing biotic sounds made by other bird species and by countless other animals. Additionally, the song must contend with substantial background noise produced by human activities, some as deafening as the din of chainsaws. Finally, and perhaps most critically, the male’s song must arrive to the female at a time when she is actually receptive—and not cognitively preoccupied with other matters, like avoiding predators or finding food. Thus, for a male Black-throated Green Warbler, as indeed for any animal attempting to communicate, the world is a noisy place. The central thesis of Haven Wiley’s new book Noise Matters is that noise has ultimately been central to the evolution of communication and has resulted in myriad specializations in signalers and receivers to overcome noise to the greatest extent possible. As Wiley puts it, his objective is ‘‘to persuade you, dear reader, that noise is indeed inescapable’’ and furthermore that ‘‘noise does not just annoy, it changes everything’’ (p. 3). Wiley makes it abundantly clear, throughout the book, that despite many specializations in signals and behavior, the challenge of noise guarantees that communication, at best, can evolve to be effective but never error-free. This imperfection in animal communication will come as no surprise to most researchers in the field, given the substantial body of work on how animal communication is challenged by noise (Brumm 2013). Wiley’s book, though, is a unique and intriguing contribution to this literature, especially given the four decades he has devoted to pioneering studies of noise in animal communication. Wiley defines noise as ‘‘anything that interferes with the reception of signals’’ (book jacket). Signals are simply ‘‘those patterns of energy of interest to a receiver’’ (p. 11). In Part I, Wiley examines some of the clever ways that evolution has specialized animal signals to deal with noise. For instance, some species have evolved so-called alerting components, which are especially prominent and loud, thereby preparing receivers to attend to a signal that imminently follows the alerting component. Similarly, many songbirds will alter their signaling behavior depending on what other sounds currently mask the acoustic environment. Indeed, the impact of acoustic noise applies even to species that show exceptionally low rates of overall

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<i>Noise Matters: The Evolution of Communication</i><b>Noise Matters: The Evolution of Communication</b> by R. Haven Wiley. 2015. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. xi + 502 pp. $45.00 (hardcover). ISBN 9780674744127.

Noise Matters: The Evolution of CommunicationNoise Matters: The Evolution of Communication by R. Haven Wiley. 2015. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. xi + 502 pp. $45.00 (hardcover). ISBN 9780674744127.