Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/55717
Title: Factors affecting follower responses to movement calls in cooperatively breeding dwarf mongooses
Contributor(s): Cobb, Benjamin (author); Morris-Drake, Amy (author); Kennedy, Patrick (author); Layton, Megan (author); Kern, Julie M  (author)orcid ; Radford, Andrew N (author)
Publication Date: 2022-10
Early Online Version: 2022-08-18
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.07.009
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/55717
Abstract: 

In social species, individuals maximize the benefits of group living by remaining cohesive and coordinating their actions. Communication is key to collective action, including ensuring that group members move together; individuals often produce signals when attempting to lead a group to a new area. However, the function of these signals, and how responses to them are affected by intrinsic characteristics of the caller and extrinsic factors, has rarely been experimentally tested. We conducted a series of field-based playback experiments with habituated wild dwarf mongooses, Helogale parvula, a cooperatively breeding and territorial species, to investigate follower responses to movement calls. In our first experiment, we found that focal individuals were more likely to respond to playback of ‘movement calls’ than control ‘close calls’, indicating movement calls function as recruitment signals. In a second experiment, we found that focal individuals responded similarly to the movement calls of dominant and subordinate groupmates, suggesting that dominance status (an intrinsic factor) does not influence receiver responses. In a final experiment, we found that individuals responded to the simulated presence of a rival group, but that this outgroup conflict (an extrinsic factor) did not affect responses to movement calls compared to a control situation. This may be because attention is instead focused on the potential presence of an imminent threat. By using playbacks to isolate the acoustic signal from physical movement cues, our results provide experimental evidence of how movement calls help leaders to attract followers and thus adds to our understanding of recruitment signals more generally.

Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: Animal Behaviour, v.192, p. 159-169
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
Place of Publication: United Kingdom
ISSN: 1095-8282
0003-3472
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 060801 Animal Behaviour
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 310901 Animal behaviour
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

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