Allometry of Alarm Calls: Black-Capped Chickadees Encode Information About Predator Size

Templeton, Christopher N.; Greene, Erick; Davis, Katherine

doi:10.1126/science.1108841

Cited by 566 publications

(579 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In black-capped chickadees, Poecile atricapillus, acoustic features of the 'seet' and 'chick-a-dee' alarm calls are correlated with both the type of predator present and the degree of danger. Playback experiments indicate that listeners acquire this information from the calls (Templeton et al 2005). A similar generalization holds for the alarm calls of African suricates, Suricata suricatta.…”

Section: Information In Animal Communicationmentioning

confidence: 63%

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

et al. 2010

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Keywords:animal communication animal signal information information transmission language meaningThe concept of information plays a central role in studies of animal communication. Animals' responses to the calls of different individuals, to food calls, alarm calls, and to signals that predict behaviour, all suggest that recipients acquire information from signals and that this information affects their response. Some scientists, however, want to replace the concept of information with one based on the 'manipulation' of recipients by signallers through the induction of nervous-system responses. Here we review both theory and data that argue against hypotheses based exclusively on manipulation or on a fixed, obligatory link between a signal's physical features and the responses it elicits. Results from dozens of studies indicate that calls with 'arousing' or 'aversive' features may also contain information that affects receivers' responses; that acoustically similar calls can elicit different responses; acoustically different calls can elicit similar responses; and 'eavesdropping' animals respond to the relationship instantiated by signal sequences. Animal signals encode a surprisingly rich amount of information. The content of this information can be studied scientifically.

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Section: Information In Animal Communicationmentioning

confidence: 63%

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

et al. 2010

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“…Therefore, the aspect of prey vulnerability most directly relevant to our study should concern the identity of predators the prey are vulnerable to, and therefore most likely to mob, rather than the modes of predator–prey interactions such as predator detection and escape, to which traits such as foraging technique and predator detection/escape strategy would have been more relevant (Lima, 1993; Sridhar et al., 2012). Functionally, body size fundamentally defines whether a species can be caught, subdued, and consumed by a given predator species (Brose et al., 2006; Cohen et al., 1993; Templeton et al., 2005), while foraging height determines the spatial overlap between prey and potential predators and thus prey exposure to and likelihood of encountering predators in forest ecosystems. These two traits thus represent the most relevant functional traits to the ecological context concerned in our study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional traits determine heterospecific use of risk‐related social information in forest birds of tropical South‐East Asia

Hua

Yong

Janra

et al. 2016

Ecology and Evolution

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In birds and mammals, mobbing calls constitute an important form of social information that can attract numerous sympatric species to localized mobbing aggregations. While such a response is thought to reduce the future predation risk for responding species, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. One way to test the link between predation risk reduction and mobbing attraction involves testing the relationship between species’ attraction to mobbing calls and the functional traits that define their vulnerability to predation risk. Two important traits known to influence prey vulnerability include relative prey‐to‐predator body size ratio and the overlap in space use between predator and prey; in combination, these measures strongly influence prey accessibility, and therefore their vulnerability, to predators. Here, we combine community surveys with behavioral experiments of a diverse bird assemblage in the lowland rainforest of Sumatra to test whether the functional traits of body mass (representing body size) and foraging height (representing space use) can predict species’ attraction to heterospecific mobbing calls. At four forest sites along a gradient of forest degradation, we characterized the resident bird communities using point count and mist‐netting surveys, and determined the species groups attracted to standardized playbacks of mobbing calls produced by five resident bird species of roughly similar body size and foraging height. We found that (1) a large, diverse subcommunity of bird species was attracted to the mobbing calls and (2) responding species (especially the most vigorous respondents) tended to be (a) small (b) mid‐storey foragers (c) with similar trait values as the species producing the mobbing calls. Our findings from the relatively lesser known bird assemblages of tropical Asia add to the growing evidence for the ubiquity of heterospecific information networks in animal communities, and provide empirical support for the long‐standing hypothesis that predation risk reduction is a major benefit of mobbing information networks.

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“…In this species, meaning is conveyed by the call sequences, not the individual calls, a possibly underestimated feature of animal communication (e.g. Zuberbühler 2002;Templeton et al 2005;Arnold & Zuberbühler 2006, 2008Clarke et al 2006). We conclude that Guerezas' alarm sequences evolved to deter predators and function as referential signals by providing vital information to eavesdrop-ping conspecifics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%