Dataset Information

Non-Vocal Behaviors Are More Frequent During the Decisive Negotiation Phases in Barn Owl Siblings.

ABSTRACT: Animals produce vibrations or noises by means of body movements, which can play a role in communication. These behaviors enhance signal transmission or receiver attention and could be specifically used during turn-taking phases of a reciprocal exchange of signals. In the barn owl Tyto alba, nestlings vocalize one after the other to negotiate which individual will have priority access to the impending prey item to be delivered by the parents. Owlets adjust their vocalization to their own hunger level and to their siblings' vocalization, withdrawing from the contest in front of highly vocal, and hence hungry, motivated nestmates. As sibling negotiation is a multicomponent display, we examined whether body movements could also be part of the negotiation process. To this end, we analyzed whether the vocalizations of one nestling affected its nestmate's movements in three separate experiments: in natural nests, in the lab, and using a playback procedure. Nestling barn owls move in a variety of ways, such as repeated tapping of the floor with a foot, scratching the floor with claws, or flapping wings. Body movements were more frequent during the turn-taking phases of vocal interactions, when siblings emitted longer calls and at a greater rate. Once an individual monopolized vocal activity, siblings became less vocal and less active. Moreover, owlets produced more noisy body movements during the phases of vocal interactions which are crucial to prevail in negotiation. Non-vocal physical activities might reinforce vocal signals during sibling to sibling (sib-sib) interactions, or reflect owlets' arousal, in the critical period during which they vocally settle which individual will dominate the competition.

SUBMITTER: N Dreiss A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7601554 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Non-Vocal Behaviors Are More Frequent During the Decisive Negotiation Phases in Barn Owl Siblings.

N Dreiss Amélie A Romano Andrea A Flint Raphaëlle R Bates Sarah S Vermunt Aurélie A Henry Isabelle I A Ruppli Charlène C Roulin Alexandre A

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI 20201001 10

Animals produce vibrations or noises by means of body movements, which can play a role in communication. These behaviors enhance signal transmission or receiver attention and could be specifically used during turn-taking phases of a reciprocal exchange of signals. In the barn owl <i>Tyto alba</i>, nestlings vocalize one after the other to negotiate which individual will have priority access to the impending prey item to be delivered by the parents. Owlets adjust their vocalization to their own h ...[more]

PMID: 33019525

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundMovement is central to understanding the ecology of animals. The most robustly definable segments of an individual's lifetime track are its diel activity routines (DARs). This robustness is due to fixed start and end points set by a 24-h clock that depends on the individual's quotidian schedule. An analysis of day-to-day variation in the DARs of individuals, their comparisons among individuals, and the questions that can be asked, particularly in the context of lunar and annual cycles, depends on the relocation frequency and spatial accuracy of movement data. Here we present methods for categorizing the geometry of DARs for high frequency (seconds to minutes) movement data.MethodsOur method involves an initial categorization of DARs using data pooled across all individuals. We approached this categorization using a Ward clustering algorithm that employs four scalar "whole-path metrics" of trajectory geometry: 1. net displacement (distance between start and end points), 2. maximum displacement from start point, 3. maximum diameter, and 4. maximum width. We illustrate the general approach using reverse-GPS data obtained from 44 barn owls, Tyto alba, in north-eastern Israel. We conducted a principle components analysis (PCA) to obtain a factor, PC1, that essentially captures the scale of movement. We then used a generalized linear mixed model with PC1 as the dependent variable to assess the effects of age and sex on movement.ResultsWe clustered 6230 individual DARs into 7 categories representing different shapes and scale of the owls nightly routines. Five categories based on size and elongation were classified as closed (i.e. returning to the same roost), one as partially open (returning to a nearby roost) and one as fully open (leaving for another region). Our PCA revealed that the DAR scale factor, PC1, accounted for 86.5% of the existing variation. It also showed that PC2 captures the openness of the DAR and accounted for another 8.4% of the variation. We also constructed spatio-temporal distributions of DAR types for individuals and groups of individuals aggregated by age, sex, and seasonal quadrimester, as well as identify some idiosyncratic behavior of individuals within family groups in relation to location. Finally, we showed in two ways that DARs were significantly larger in young than adults and in males than females.ConclusionOur study offers a new method for using high-frequency movement data to classify animal diel movement routines. Insights into the types and distributions of the geometric shape and size of DARs in populations may well prove to be more invaluable for predicting the space-use response of individuals and populations to climate and land-use changes than other currently used movement track methods of analysis.

Dataset Information

Non-Vocal Behaviors Are More Frequent During the Decisive Negotiation Phases in Barn Owl Siblings.

Publications

Non-Vocal Behaviors Are More Frequent During the Decisive Negotiation Phases in Barn Owl Siblings.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets