Dataset Information

Heterospecific eavesdropping on an anti-parasitic referential alarm call.

ABSTRACT: Referential alarm calls occur across taxa to warn of specific predator types. However, referential calls may also denote other types of dangers. Yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia) produce "seet" calls specifically to warn conspecifics of obligate brood parasitic brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater), which lay their eggs in the warblers' and other species' nests. Sympatric hosts of cowbirds that do not have referential alarm calls may eavesdrop on the yellow warbler's seet call as a warning system for brood parasites. Using playback presentations, we found that red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) eavesdrop on seet calls of yellow warblers, and respond as much to seet calls as to cowbird chatters and predator calls. Red-winged blackbirds appear to eavesdrop on seets as warning system to boost frontline defenses on their territories, although they do not seem to perceive the warblers' seets as a cue for parasitism per se, but rather for general danger to the nest.

SUBMITTER: Lawson SL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7109080 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Heterospecific eavesdropping on an anti-parasitic referential alarm call.

Lawson Shelby L SL Enos Janice K JK Mendes Niko C NC Gill Sharon A SA Hauber Mark E ME

Communications biology 20200331 1

Referential alarm calls occur across taxa to warn of specific predator types. However, referential calls may also denote other types of dangers. Yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia) produce "seet" calls specifically to warn conspecifics of obligate brood parasitic brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater), which lay their eggs in the warblers' and other species' nests. Sympatric hosts of cowbirds that do not have referential alarm calls may eavesdrop on the yellow warbler's seet call as a warning s ...[more]

PMID: 32235851

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Project description:Animals eavesdrop on other species to obtain information about their environments. Heterospecific eavesdropping can yield tangible fitness benefits by providing valuable information about food resources and predator presence. The ability to eavesdrop may therefore be under strong selection, although extensive research on alarm-calling in avian mixed-species flocks has found only limited evidence that close association with another species could select for innate signal recognition. Nevertheless, very little is known about the evolution of eavesdropping behaviour and the mechanism of heterospecific signal recognition, particularly in other ecological contexts, such as foraging. To understand whether heterospecific eavesdropping was an innate or learned behaviour in a foraging context, we studied heterospecific signal recognition in ant-following birds of the Neotropics, which eavesdrop on vocalizations of obligate ant-following species to locate and recruit to swarms of the army ant Eciton burchellii, a profitable food resource. We used a playback experiment to compare recruitment of ant-following birds to vocalizations of two obligate species at a mainland site (where both species are present) and a nearby island site (where one species remains whereas the other went extinct approx. 40 years ago). We found that ant-following birds recruited strongly to playbacks of the obligate species present at both island and mainland sites, but the island birds did not recruit to playbacks of the absent obligate species. Our results strongly suggest that (i) ant-following birds learn to recognize heterospecific vocalizations from ecological experience and (ii) island birds no longer recognize the locally extinct obligate species after eight generations of absence from the island. Although learning appears to be the mechanism of heterospecific signal recognition in ant-following birds, more experimental tests are needed to fully understand the evolution of eavesdropping behaviour.

Dataset Information

Heterospecific eavesdropping on an anti-parasitic referential alarm call.

Publications

Heterospecific eavesdropping on an anti-parasitic referential alarm call.

Similar Datasets

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