Great tit responses to the calls of an unfamiliar species suggest conserved perception of call ordering

Dutour, Mylène; Suzuki, Toshitaka N.; Wheatcroft, David

doi:10.1007/s00265-020-2820-7

Cited by 19 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…A second important result in our study is that great tits always responded more to conspecifics than to heterospecifics. This result is congruent with various studies using heterospecific call sequences, and particularly Randler (2012) that found a lower response of great tits to black‐capped chickadees calls, but not with Dutour et al (2020) who did not detect differences in approach when comparing conspecific and heterospecific calls in the great tit. This low level of response could be explained by the choice we made when preparing our stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…This result is in adequacy with the emerging hypothesis of semantic compositionality in Parids (Engesser & Townsend, 2019; Suzuki et al., 2019; Zuberbühler, 2019). To be true, this hypothesis must meet several criteria: (a) A different order should trigger a different response, which has been demonstrated for conspecific calls in the Japanese tit (Suzuki et al., 2016), but also recently for the great tit towards the black‐capped chickadee calls (Dutour et al, 2020). (b) The whole sequence should not only be the sum of its different parts, but have a new emergent meaning, which is the main result of our study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tests were carried out between 06:00 and 13:00 hr during calm and dry days. To avoid pseudoreplication, all selected focal birds were distant from one another by at least 100 m (Dutour, Léna, et al., 2019; Dutour et al, 2020). Two or three different calling males were usually detected within 100 m, we never went on the same path twice, and we made sure that no bird was following us.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Great tits (Parus major) adequately respond to both allopatric combinatorial mobbing calls and their isolated parts

2020

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When mobbing a predator, birds often produce specific mobbing calls that are efficient in recruiting both conspecifics and heterospecifics. Recent studies on Parids have demonstrated that these mobbing calls are in fact a combination of two distinct calls—first, introductory notes eliciting vigilance in the receiver, then broadband frequency notes (D notes) triggering approach. Debates on a parallel between human syntax and this form of combination have emerged. The degree to which this combinatoriality is perceived in heterospecific communication may shed light onto the relative complexity of such combinatoriality. In this study, our aim was to determine whether European great tits (Parus major) appropriately responded to mobbing calls (and their isolated parts) of an allopatric species, the black‐capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus), a North‐American species which produces similar combinatorial mobbing calls. In addition, we tested whether the behavioural response to complete mobbing sequences was different than the simple sum of its two constituents. As we hypothesized, great tits behaved differently when hearing the two isolated calls or the complete mobbing sequence: they produced calls and displayed excitement signs only towards the complete mobbing sequence. Moreover, great tits responded to the introductory and D notes by respectively scanning and approaching, and to the complete sequence by mobbing. Our results altogether support the emerging hypothesis of semantic compositionality in Parids, although the present study does not definitively demonstrate the existence of this cognitive process in the great tit.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Great tits (Parus major) adequately respond to both allopatric combinatorial mobbing calls and their isolated parts

2020

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“…The great tit (Parus major) is a model species for ecological and behavioural studies (e.g. Aplin et al, 2015;Cole et al, 2011;Dutour et al, 2020;Loukola et al, 2020;Morand-Ferron et al, 2011). Great tits adapt well to temporary captivity, allowing for their use in controlled experiments on individual differences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No evidence for cross-contextual consistency in spatial learning and behavioural flexibility in a passerine

Troisi

Cooke

Davidson

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Although the evolution of cognitive differences among species has long been of interest in ecology, whether natural selection acts on cognitive processes within populations has only begun to receive similar attention. One of the key challenges is to understand how consistently cognitive traits within any one domain are expressed over time and across different contexts, as this has direct implications for the way in which selection might act on this variation. Animal studies typically measure a cognitive domain using only one task in one context, and assume that this captures the likely expression of that domain in different contexts. This deficit is not surprising because, from an ecologist's perspective, cognitive tasks are notoriously laborious to employ, and for design reasons most tasks can only be deployed in a specific context. Thus our knowledge of whether individual differences in cognitive abilities are consistent across contexts is limited. Using a wild population of great tits (Parus major) we characterised consistency of two cognitive abilities, each in two different contexts: 1) spatial learning at two different spatial scales, and 2) behavioural flexibility as both performance in a detour reaching task and reversal learning in a spatial task. We found no evidence of a correlation between the two spatial learning speeds, or between the two measures of behavioural flexibility. This suggests that cognitive performance is highly plastic and sensitive to differences across tasks, or that variants of these well-known tasks may tap into different combinations of both cognitive and non-cognitive mechanisms, or that they simply do not adequately measure each putative cognitive domain. Our results highlight the challenges of developing standardised cognitive assays to explain natural behaviour and to understand the selective consequences of that variation.

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“…Eavesdropping can be facilitated considering that the call structure, at least of the distress calls, appears conserved across various taxa (e.g., Högstedt 1983;Russ et al 2004;Lingle et al 2012), and thus, different prey species may decode the information about the nearby threat and act accordingly (Aubin 1991;Huang et al 2018). In the case of alarm calls, evidence indicate that eavesdropping is possible if calls have similar acoustic structure (Fallow et al 2013;Dutour et al 2020). Research on eavesdropping has been mostly focused on alarm calls (Caro 2005), such as the study on the burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) where the individuals display antipredator behaviours when listening the alarm calls of black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), which vocalize to warn kin when danger is spotted (Bryan and Wunder 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Liolaemus lemniscatus eavesdrop on the distress calls of the sympatric weeping lizard?

Fong

Navea

Labra

2020

J Ethol

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For a prey, its best ticket to stay alive is to get early and accurate information on predation risk and so, escape from predation at low cost. Some prey species have evolved the ability to eavesdrop signals intended for others, which contain information on predation risk. This is the case for the vocalizations produced by prey species when interacting with predators. Although primarily studied in birds and mammals, eavesdropping on vocal signals has been recorded in some lizard species. Here, we explored whether the lizard Liolaemus lemniscatus eavesdrops on the distress calls of its sympatric species, the Weeping lizard (L. chiliensis). Individuals of the Weeping lizard respond to these calls by displaying antipredator behaviours (i.e., reduced movement), and individuals of L. lemniscatus may potentially display similar defences if they decode the information contained in these calls. Our playback experiments showed that individuals of L. lemniscatus responded to the sound stimuli (distress calls and white noise), reducing their activity, but they did not discriminate between these two stimuli, suggesting that L. lemniscatus does not eavesdrop on the distress calls of its sympatric lizard species. We discuss some hypotheses to explain the lack of eavesdropping by L. lemniscatus on the Weeping lizard distress calls.

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Great tit responses to the calls of an unfamiliar species suggest conserved perception of call ordering

Cited by 19 publications

References 44 publications

Great tits (Parus major) adequately respond to both allopatric combinatorial mobbing calls and their isolated parts

Great tits (Parus major) adequately respond to both allopatric combinatorial mobbing calls and their isolated parts

No evidence for cross-contextual consistency in spatial learning and behavioural flexibility in a passerine

Does Liolaemus lemniscatus eavesdrop on the distress calls of the sympatric weeping lizard?

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