Behavioural variables influence contact call rate more than characteristics of the vegetation in a group-living passerine species

Meaux, Estelle; Peabotuwage, Indika; Mammides, Christos; Malykhina, Katsiaryna; Quan, Rui‐Chang; Goodale, Eben

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2021.104345

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Rather, social stimuli, and specifically the presence of affiliated individuals and individuals of similar levels on the dominance hierarchy, were associated with higher individual‐level calling rates. Together with other studies on Swinhoe's White‐eyes (Meaux, He, et al, 2021; Meaux, Peabotuwage, et al, 2021), these findings suggest that changes in contact call rate in this species are more influenced by social context than by environmental conditions. Below, we discuss in detail the effects of vegetation density, and then the effects of group size and group composition on the different call types.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…The result is consistent with our work in the field. There, aspects of vegetation density explained only 2% of the variation in the group‐level contact call, which was rather related to movement, specifically increasing before peripheral birds flew into the center of the group (Meaux, Peabotuwage, et al, 2021). The conclusion of the field study was that call rate did not convey information on environmental conditions when both signaller and receiver were relatively close together, although it might function as a recruitment call (see e.g., Gall & Manser, 2017; Mahurin & Freeberg, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For animals that must move through thick vegetation or that must spend much visual attention on foraging, an important mechanism for maintaining cohesion are vocalizations, and in particular “contact calls” that are produced in a repetitive manner by most group members (Fichtel & Manser, 2010; Kondo & Watanabe, 2009; Marler, 2004; Snijders & Naguib, 2017). We will hereafter use the term “contact call” to refer broadly to any vocalization related to group movement, spacing or cohesion, following Meaux, Peabotuwage, et al (2021). Much of the research on contact calls has focused on their acoustic characteristics, and it has been shown that they can allow the recognition of individuals (reviewed by Rendall & Owren, 2002), or can be an indicator of group membership, through convergence of calls' acoustic properties (reviewed by Sewall, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We manipulated group size in an aviary experiment, measuring the group-level calling frequency of the birds, and then dividing it by the number of individuals present to calculate a mean individual-level calling rate (hereafter, we refer to this as simply as "individual-level" rate). This study can thus be considered as a kind of "audience experiment" that tests whether the presence of certain receivers influence the Previous fieldwork has shown in this species that the group-level contact call rate is not strongly influenced by the vegetation where the birds are located (Meaux, Peabotuwage, et al, 2021); however, we wanted to re-examine this finding under more controlled conditions. Since birds' rate of vocalizations are often influenced by their social setting (Coppinger et al, 2018;Elie et al, 2011;Fernandez et al, 2017;Freeberg & Harvey, 2008), we expected that the presence of affiliated individuals together in a group would increase the individual-level call rate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this study, we worked with a highly gregarious passerine species, Swinhoe's White‐eye, Zosterops simplex . Flocks of white‐eyes can be quite stable, formed by the same individuals and found in the same place day after day (Kikkawa, 1961; Meaux, Peabotuwage, et al, 2021), and produce nearly continual contact calls, which makes this species a good model to study the factors modulating contact call rate. A first objective in this study was to determine whether white‐eyes would regulate their individual calling rates to maintain a group‐level rate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Audience effects in a group‐living bird: How contact call rate is affected by vegetation and group size and composition

Meaux

Zeng

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Audience effects in a group‐living bird: How contact call rate is affected by vegetation and group size and composition

Meaux

Zeng

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Stochastic processes shape the functional and phylogenetic structure of bird assemblages at the mine area in southwest China

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding the mechanisms of community assembly is a key question in ecology. Metal pollution may result in significant changes in bird community structure and diversity, with implications for ecosystem processes and function. However, the relative importance of these processes in shaping the bird community at the polluted area is still not clear. Here, we explored bird species richness, functional, and phylogenetic diversity, and the assembly processes of community at the mine region of southwest China. Our results showed that the three dimensions of diversity at the mine area were lower than that at the reference sites. In the community assembly, the result was 0 < NRI / NFRI < 1.96, which indicated deterministic processes (environmental filtering) might drive community clustering. The results of the neutral community model, and normalized stochasticity ratio, showed the dominant role of stochastic processes in shaping the bird community assembly. We further quantified the community-level habitat niche breadth (Bcom), and we found that there was no difference in Bcom-value between the mine area and reference sites. This indicates that the bird communities at the mine area and three reference sites were not subjected to extreme environmental selection (same or different resource allocation) to form a highly specialized niche. These findings provide insights into the distribution patterns and dominant ecological processes of bird communities under metal exposure, and extend the knowledge in community assembly mechanisms of bird communities living in the mine area.

show abstract

Meta‐analysis of the acoustic adaptation hypothesis reveals no support for the effect of vegetation structure on acoustic signalling across terrestrial vertebrates

Freitas,

D'Amelio,

Milá

et al. 2024

Biological Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Acoustic communication plays a prominent role in various ecological and evolutionary processes involving social interactions. The properties of acoustic signals are thought to be influenced not only by the interaction between signaller and receiver but also by the acoustic characteristics of the environment through which the signal is transmitted. This conjecture forms the core of the so‐called “acoustic adaptation hypothesis” (AAH), which posits that vegetation structure affects frequency and temporal parameters of acoustic signals emitted by a signaller as a function of their acoustic degradation properties. Specifically, animals in densely vegetated “closed habitats” are expected to produce longer acoustic signals with lower repetition rates and lower frequencies (minimum, mean, maximum, and peak) compared to those inhabiting less‐vegetated “open habitats”. To date, this hypothesis has received mixed results, with the level of support depending on the taxonomic group and the methodology used. We conducted a systematic literature search of empirical studies testing for an effect of vegetation structure on acoustic signalling and assessed the generality of the AAH using a meta‐analytic approach based on 371 effect sizes from 75 studies and 57 taxa encompassing birds, mammals and amphibians. Overall, our results do not provide consistent support for the AAH, neither in within‐species comparisons (suggesting no overall phenotypically plastic response of acoustic signalling to vegetation structure) nor in among‐species comparisons (suggesting no overall evolutionary response). However, when considering birds only, we found weak support for the AAH in within‐species comparisons, which was mainly driven by studies that measured frequency bandwidth, suggesting that this variable may exhibit a phenotypically plastic response to vegetation structure. For among‐species comparisons in birds, we also found support for the AAH, but this effect was not significant after excluding comparative studies that did not account for phylogenetic non‐independence. Collectively, our synthesis does not support a universal role of vegetation structure in the evolution of acoustic communication. We highlight the need for more empirical work on currently under‐studied taxa such as amphibians, mammals, and insects. Furthermore, we propose a framework for future research on the AAH. We specifically advocate for a more detailed and quantitative characterisation of habitats to identify frequencies with the highest detection probability and to determine if frequencies with greater detection distances are preferentially used. Finally, we stress that empirical tests of the AAH should focus on signals that are selected for increased transmission distance.

show abstract

Behavioural variables influence contact call rate more than characteristics of the vegetation in a group-living passerine species

Cited by 5 publications

References 51 publications

Audience effects in a group‐living bird: How contact call rate is affected by vegetation and group size and composition

Audience effects in a group‐living bird: How contact call rate is affected by vegetation and group size and composition

Stochastic processes shape the functional and phylogenetic structure of bird assemblages at the mine area in southwest China

Meta‐analysis of the acoustic adaptation hypothesis reveals no support for the effect of vegetation structure on acoustic signalling across terrestrial vertebrates

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About