We compared cultural, genetic and morphological variation in a set of 10 reed bunting  Emberiza schoeniclus populations of two subspecies groups, the northern thin billed and southern thick billed. We used four different markers of variation: two cultural divergence measures, quantitative characters and memetic frequencies; one measure of genetic divergence, i.e. microsatellite allele frequencies; and one measure of morphological divergence of populations, i.e. bill height. We calculated correlations among the divergence measures and estimated cultural evolutionary rates between and within subspecies groups using genetic divergence as the evolutionary time scale. We found that only cultural-quantitative and genetic divergence are correlated to morphological divergence of populations. There was no association between the two cultural divergence measures and between cultural and genetic divergence. Cultural evolutionary rates were higher between subspecies groups than within subspecies groups using cultural-quantitative divergence measures, suggesting only a weak and probably secondary function of song as a barrier to hybridisation. Variation in quantitative characters of song behaves similarly to microsatellite frequencies, and could be actually more genetic in nature. This could explain the incongruent results given by the analysis of the two "cultural" variation measures, which may refer to different aspects of song evolution. Acoustic properties of song may have evolved in response to habitat differences or to morphological constraints, while memetic properties may have been more affected by song learning and cultural transmission [Acta Zoologica Sinica,