Snake-like calls in breeding tits.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Moller AP
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8489176 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Many animals mimic the behavior or the appearance of venomous snakes. When humans or other potential predators place their hand near the nest of tits belonging to the family Paridae (and a few other species), the incubating female performs a hissing display that mimics the inhalation hiss of a viper or another snake. They hiss vigorously while lunging their head forward and shaking their wings and tail, repeating this behavior several times. The structure of the hiss in tits is similar to that of the inhalation hiss of a snake, providing evidence of significant convergence of the mimic toward the model. The behavior of individual females is repeatable among trials. Individuals that flew away from their nest box only performed the hissing display on 6% of later trials, when present at their box, whereas individuals that did not fly away hissed on 28% of occasions, consistent with great tits Parus major either cautiously flying away or staying put on their nest while actively defending it. Individuals that flew away produced fewer chicks than individuals that stayed and hissed. The hissing display was more common when snakes were more abundant: 1) When breeding late during the season; 2) when breeding at sites with more snakes; and 3) when breeding in subtropical and tropical China with a higher abundance of snakes than in Denmark with a lower abundance. The frequency of nest predation was higher in sites with no snakes, and the frequency of predation increased with decreasing frequency of hissing display. These findings are consistent with expectations for frequency-dependent selection acting on snake mimicry.
| S-EPMC7901754 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The calling behaviour of Paridae species (i.e. titmice, tits and chickadees) in a predator-related context is well-studied. Parid species are known to alter call types, note composition or call duration according to predation risk. However, how these species encode information about a non-threatening context, such as food sources, has been subject to only few studies. Studies in Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis) have shown that this species alters the ratio of C and D notes to encode information about the presence of food and/or the flight behaviour of the signaller. This suggests that parids also use graded signals to encode information about non-predatory contexts. No study to date has directly compared the calls of a feeding context with those of a predation (i.e. mobbing) context. Hence, the aim of this study was to compare the calling behaviour of these two situations in great tits (Parus major). Calls uttered at a feeder were recorded, analysed and compared with calls uttered in front of taxidermy mounts of sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus). In the food context, great tits reduced the number of D notes and increased the number of B, C and E notes compared with the mobbing context. Furthermore, tits produced calls with longer D notes and shorter intervals between D notes than in the mobbing context. This indicates that great tits use two mechanisms of graded signals (i.e. note type and acoustic structure of D calls) to inform conspecifics about the nature of a situation.
| S-EPMC6894574 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Inclusive fitness theory provides the conceptual framework for our current understanding of social evolution, and empirical studies suggest that kin selection is a critical process in the evolution of animal sociality. A key prediction of inclusive fitness theory is that altruistic behaviour evolves when the costs incurred by an altruist (c) are outweighed by the benefit to the recipient (b), weighted by the relatedness of altruist to recipient (r), i.e. Hamilton's rule rb > c. Despite its central importance in social evolution theory, there have been relatively few empirical tests of Hamilton's rule, and hardly any among cooperatively breeding vertebrates, leading some authors to question its utility. Here, we use data from a long-term study of cooperatively breeding long-tailed tits Aegithalos caudatus to examine whether helping behaviour satisfies Hamilton's condition for the evolution of altruism. We show that helpers are altruistic because they incur survival costs through the provision of alloparental care for offspring. However, they also accrue substantial benefits through increased survival of related breeders and offspring, and despite the low average relatedness of helpers to recipients, these benefits of helping outweigh the costs incurred. We conclude that Hamilton's rule for the evolution of altruistic helping behaviour is satisfied in this species.
| S-EPMC3982671 | biostudies-other
Project description:When facing a predator, animals need to perform an appropriate antipredator behavior such as escaping or mobbing to prevent predation. Many bird species exhibit distinct mobbing behaviors and vocalizations once a predator has been detected. In some species, mobbing calls transmit information about predator type, size, and threat, which can be assessed by conspecifics. We recently found that great tits (Parus major) produce longer D calls with more elements and longer intervals between elements when confronted with a sparrowhawk, a high-threat predator, in comparison to calls produced in front of a less-threatening tawny owl. In the present study, we conducted a playback experiment to investigate if these differences in mobbing calls elicit different behavioral responses in adult great tits. We found tits to have a longer latency time and to keep a greater distance to the speaker when sparrowhawk mobbing calls were broadcast. This suggests that tits are capable of decoding information about predator threat in conspecific mobbing calls. We further found a tendency for males to approach faster and closer than females, which indicates that males are willing to take higher risks in a mobbing context than females.
| S-EPMC6706190 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Throughout the Western World, huge numbers of people regularly supply food for wild birds. However, evidence of negative impacts of winter feeding on future reproduction has highlighted a need to improve understanding of the underlying mechanisms shaping avian responses to supplementary food. Here, we test the possibility that carry-over effects are mediated via their impact on the phenotypes of breeding birds, either by influencing the phenotypic structure of populations through changes in winter survival and/or by more direct effects on the condition of breeding birds. Using a landscape-scale 3-year study of blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), we demonstrate the importance of nutritional composition of supplementary food in determining carry-over effect outcomes. We show that breeding populations which had access to vitamin E-rich foods during the previous winter were comprised of individuals with reduced feather carotenoid concentrations, indicative of lower pre-feeding phenotypic condition, compared to fat-fed and unfed populations. This suggests that supplementary feeding in winter can result in altered population phenotypic structure at the time of breeding, perhaps by enhancing survival and recruitment of lower quality individuals. However, supplementation of a fat-rich diet during winter was detrimental to the oxidative state of breeding birds, with these phenotypic differences ultimately found to impact upon reproductive success. Our findings demonstrate the complex nature by which supplementary feeding can influence wild bird populations.
| S-EPMC5980576 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Cooperative breeding is a sophisticated altruistic social behavior that helps social animals to adapt to harsh environments. The Tibetan ground tit, Pseudopodoces humilis, is a high-altitude bird endemic to the Tibetan plateau. Recently, it has become an exciting system for studying the evolution of facultative cooperative breeding. To test for molecular adaptations associated with cooperative breeding, we resequenced the whole genome of ground tits from 6 wild populations that display remarkable variation in the frequency of cooperative breeding. Population structure analyses showed that the 6 populations were divided into 4 lineages, which is congruent with the major geographical distribution of the sampling sites. Using genome-wide selective sweep analysis, we identified putative positively selected genes (PSGs) in groups of tits that displayed high and low cooperative breeding rates. The total number of PSGs varied from 146 to 722 in high cooperative breeding rate populations, and from 272 to 752 in low cooperative breeding rate populations. Functional enrichment analysis of these PSGs identified several significantly enriched ontologies related to oxytocin signaling, estrogen signaling, and insulin secretion. PSGs involved in these functional ontologies suggest that molecular adaptations in hormonal regulation may have played important roles in shaping the evolution of cooperative breeding in the ground tit. Taken together, our study provides candidate genes and functional ontologies involved in molecular adaptations associated with cooperative breeding in Tibetan ground tits, and calls for a better understanding of the genetic roles in the evolution of cooperative breeding.
| S-EPMC10449426 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Abstract Urban areas differ from natural habitats in several environmental features that influence the characteristics of animals living there. For example, birds often start breeding seasonally earlier and fledge fewer offspring per brood in cities than in natural habitats. However, longer breeding seasons in cities may increase the frequency of double-brooding in urban compared with nonurban populations, thus potentially increasing urban birds’ annual reproductive output and resulting in lower habitat difference in reproductive success than estimated by studies focusing on first clutches only. In this study, we investigated 2 urban and 2 forests great tit Parus major populations from 2013 to 2019. We compared the probability of double-brooding and the total number of annually fledged chicks per female between urban and forest habitats, while controlling for the effects of potentially confounding variables. There was a trend for a higher probability of double-brooding in urban (44% of females) than in forest populations (36%), although this was not consistent between the 2 urban sites. Females produced significantly fewer fledglings annually in the cities than in the forest sites, and this difference was present both within single- and double-brooded females. Furthermore, double-brooded urban females produced a similar number of fledglings per season as single-brooded forest females. These results indicate that double-brooding increases the reproductive success of female great tits in both habitats, but urban females cannot effectively compensate in this way for their lower reproductive output per brood. However, other mechanisms like increased post-fledging survival can mitigate habitat differences in reproductive success.
| S-EPMC9616069 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In many complex societies, intricate communication and recognition systems may evolve to help support both direct and indirect benefits of group membership. In cooperatively breeding species where groups typically comprise relatives, both learned and innate vocal signals may serve as reliable cues for kin recognition. Here, we investigated vocal communication in the plural cooperatively breeding superb starling, Lamprotornis superbus, where flight calls-short, stereotyped vocalizations used when approaching conspecifics-may communicate kin relationships, group membership, and/or individual identity. We found that flight calls were most similar within individual repertoires but were also more similar within groups than within the larger population. Although starlings responded differently to playback of calls from their own versus other neighboring and distant social groups, call similarity was uncorrelated with genetic relatedness. Additionally, immigrant females showed similar patterns to birds born in the study population. Together, these results suggest that flight calls are learned signals that reflect social association but may also carry a signal of individuality. Flight calls, therefore, provide a reliable recognition mechanism for groups and may also be used to recognize individuals. In complex societies comprising related and unrelated individuals, signaling individuality and group association, rather than kinship, may be a route to cooperation.
| S-EPMC3796708 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: In colonially breeding birds, the ability to discriminate between individuals is often essential. During post-fledging care, parents have to recognize their own offspring among many other unrelated chicks in the breeding colony. It is well known that fledglings and food-provisioning parents of many bird species use contact calls to convey their identity. These calls are also often used as hunger-related signals of need in young birds. Here, we investigate how such calls incorporate signals of need and at the same time act as reliable indicators of each chick's identity. RESULTS: In a field study, we experimentally manipulated the hunger level of colonially breeding Jackson's golden-backed weaver (Ploceus jacksoni) nestlings close to fledging and investigated its effects on acoustic call parameters. Some acoustic parameters that were related to the time-frequency pattern showed high individuality and were largely unaffected by a nestling's state of hunger. However, the majority of call parameters were significantly affected by hunger. Interestingly, most of these acoustic parameters showed both consistent changes with hunger and high between-individual differences, i.e. potential for individual recognition. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that individual recognition processes can be based on static, hunger-independent call parameters, but also on dynamic hunger-related parameters that show high individuality. Furthermore, these signal properties suggest that the assessment of signals of need can be improved if the signal value is referenced to a chick's vocal spectrum.
| S-EPMC3038888 | biostudies-other