Chick Begging Calls Reflect Degree of Hunger in Three Auk Species (Charadriiformes: Alcidae)

Abstract

Begging behaviour is an important element in the parent-offspring conflict; it has been studied in many avian species. However, the majority of the studies have been entirely based on the call counts, and they agreed that vocal activity was a good indicator of chick’s nutritional need and/or condition. Fewer researches were dedicated to the temporal-frequency variables of the begging calls themselves and they showed contrary results. Here begging behaviour in three burrow nested, uniparous species of auks (Alcidae) was studied. These objects provide an opportunity to study the signalling value of begging calls in the absence of important confounding factors such as nestling competition and predation pressure. I recorded calls of individual chicks in two conditions: during natural feeding and after experimental four-hour food deprivation. I found that almost all measured acoustic variables contain information about the chick’s state in all studied species. The hungry chicks produced calls higher in fundamental frequency and power variables and at higher calling rate compared to naturally feeding chicks. The effect of food deprivation on most acoustic variables exceeded both the effects of individuality and species. In all studied species, the frequency variables were stronger affected by hunger than the calling rate and call durations. I suppose that such strong change of acoustic variables after food deprivation can be explained by absence of vocal individual identification in these birds. As parents do not need to check individuality of the chick in the burrow, which they find visually during the day time, the chicks could use all of the acoustic variables to communicate about their nutritional needs.

Bioacoustic monitoring of animal vocal behavior for conservation

“…A pertinent example is begging in young birds and mammals, a behavior that is thought to function largely as signals of an individual's need or quality (Hinde & Godfray, 2011;Johnstone & Godfray, 2002). Evidence of the former comes from the many experiments that show hungrier infants to vocalize differently, usually louder or more often (Gladbach, Büßer, Mundry, & Quillfeldt, 2009;Godfray, 1991;Klenova, 2015;Manser, Madden, Kunc, English, & Clutton-Brock, 2008;Rector, Walsh, Kouwenberg, Fitzsimmons, & Storey, 2014;Redondo & Castro, 1992;Reers & Jacot, 2011). Parents or other adults may respond with greater food provisioning.…”

Advertising individual identity by mother and adolescent contact calls in Siberian wapiti Cervus elaphus sibiricus

“…Vocal cues to young age may be shared across mammalian taxa (Lingle & Riede, 2014) similar to the shared across taxa vocal cues to discomfort (Briefer, 2012;Filippi et al, 2017;Klenova, 2015;Lingle & Riede, 2014;Volodin, Volodina, Gogoleva, & Doronina, 2009). The study by Lingle and Riede (2014) demonstrated that female mule deer and white-tailed deer respond to vocalizations of the young of many taxonomically distant species if the fundamental frequency falls or is manipulated to fall within the frequency range in which deer respond to young of their own species.…”

Maternal presence influences vocal development in the Japanese quail (Coturnix c. japonica)

“…Vocal differences observed in our study, between mothered and non‐mothered chicks, may have a functional aspect. Vocalisations can transmit information about the needs of young (Klenova, ; Leonard & Horn, ), and they can affect maternal responses accordingly (Chabert et al, ; Perez et al, ). Vocalisations of the mothered chicks are likely to be better adapted to the mother–young interactions than those of the non‐mothered chicks but playback experiments would be required to test this hypothesis.…”