Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21827
Title: Alarm calls of a cooperative bird are referential and elicit context-specific antipredator behavior
Contributor(s): Farrow, Lucy  (author); Doohan, Samantha J (author); McDonald, Paul  (author)orcid 
Publication Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arx020
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21827
Abstract: Although functionally referential signals have been extensively studied, largely in mammals (e.g., nonhuman primates, see Cheney and Seyfarth (1988); mongooses, see Manser et al. (2002); and other ground-dwelling species, see Blumstein and Armitage (1997), other social taxa such as birds would similarly benefit from the use of referential signals. We therefore investigated alarm calling in the cooperative noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala), a species that has been anecdotally recorded producing aerial alarms to flying predators and empirically recorded generating terrestrial alarms to ground-based threats. For these signals to be truly referential however, they must meet 3 criteria. First, calls must be structurally distinct, a requirement that these 2 call types meet. Second, calls must be stimulus-specific and reliably associated with a given stimulus. We tested this on free-living birds by exposing them to a simulated aerial predator that was either in flight or subsequently perched and thus presented one of the first studies on functionally referential alarm systems where both aerial and terrestrial alarm calls have been tested. Miners only produced aerial alarms while the stimulus was in flight, switching to terrestrial alarms once it landed. Third, referential signals must elicit different escape responses that are "appropriate" to the associated threat. Under field conditions, aerial alarm playback alone provoked an almost instantaneous response of fleeing to vegetation cover, whereas terrestrial alarm playback elicited significantly slower responses by receivers and an increase in scanning behavior. During laboratory experiments, aerial alarms stimulated birds to spend more time looking upwards, whereas terrestrial alarm calls stimulated individuals to scan perpendicularly, as expected if these stimuli provided information on likely predator location. Although other avian taxa have been shown to use referential alarm signals, this system provides novel evidence of referential calls based on the behavior rather than the type of predator, providing a highly adaptive means of communicating risk to other members of the social group in this cooperative species.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: Behavioral Ecology, 28(3), p. 724-731
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Place of Publication: United States of America
ISSN: 1465-7279
1045-2249
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 060304 Ethology and Sociobiology
060801 Animal Behaviour
060809 Vertebrate Biology
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 310301 Behavioural ecology
310901 Animal behaviour
310914 Vertebrate biology
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences
Peer Reviewed: Yes
HERDC Category Description: C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal
Appears in Collections:Journal Article
School of Environmental and Rural Science

Files in This Item:
2 files
File Description SizeFormat 
Show full item record

SCOPUSTM   
Citations

17
checked on Aug 12, 2023

Page view(s)

1,400
checked on Aug 13, 2023
Google Media

Google ScholarTM

Check

Altmetric


Items in Research UNE are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.