Male black-capped chickadees begin dawn chorusing earlier in response to simulated territorial insertions

Foote, Jennifer R.; Fitzsimmons, Lauren P.; Mennill, Daniel J.; Ratcliffe, Laurene M.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.01.028

Cited by 32 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Park blackbirds, supposedly, did not awake by the song of a conspecific, but due to noise and light conditions. Social cues prompt them to sing earlier only once they are awake, as already supposed by Foote et al [99]. In this case, similar environmental conditions caused low variability in song onset times and hence induced a spatial autocorrelation [100].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 54%

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Sleepless in Town – Drivers of the Temporal Shift in Dawn Song in Urban European Blackbirds

2013

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Organisms living in urban environments are exposed to different environmental conditions compared to their rural conspecifics. Especially anthropogenic noise and artificial night light are closely linked to urbanization and pose new challenges to urban species. Songbirds are particularly affected by these factors, because they rely on the spread of acoustic information and adjust their behaviour to the rhythm of night and day, e.g. time their dawn song according to changing light intensities. Our aim was to clarify the specific contributions of artificial night light and traffic noise on the timing of dawn song of urban European Blackbirds (Turdus merula). We investigated the onset of blackbird dawn song along a steep urban gradient ranging from an urban forest to the city centre of Leipzig, Germany. This gradient of anthropogenic noise and artificial night light was reflected in the timing of dawn song. In the city centre, blackbirds started their dawn song up to 5 hours earlier compared to those in semi-natural habitats. We found traffic noise to be the driving factor of the shift of dawn song into true night, although it was not completely separable from the effects of ambient night light. We additionally included meteorological conditions into the analysis and found an effect on the song onset. Cloudy and cold weather delayed the onset, but cloud cover was assumed to reflect night light emissions, thus, amplified sky luminance and increased the effect of artificial night light. Beside these temporal effects, we also found differences in the spatial autocorrelation of dawn song onset showing a much higher variability in noisy city areas than in rural parks and forests. These findings indicate that urban hazards such as ambient noise and light pollution show a manifold interference with naturally evolved cycles and have significant effects on the activity patterns of urban blackbirds.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 54%

“…In several bird species, where timing of dawn song advertises male quality, an already singing bird has a stimulating effect on nearby competitors [42], [99]. Therefore, we expected to find little variation in the song onset times between close neighbours.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleepless in Town – Drivers of the Temporal Shift in Dawn Song in Urban European Blackbirds

2013

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“…Alternatively, birds may have roosted at the illuminated site, and may have been awake earlier due to the light, but may actively have chosen not to start singing. This choice may be conditional upon factors such as social stimulation (number of singing males; Foote, Fitzsimmons, Mennill, & Ratcliffe, 2011), body condition (Cuthill & Macdonald, 1990;Grava et al, 2009;Russ et al, 2015), personality (Naguib, van Rooij, Snijders, & van Oers, 2016), stress levels (Russ et al, 2015) or predation risk (Schmidt & Belinsky, 2013). The latter may play a role in our study, because night predators (owls) may be more numerous in forests than in cities (although evidence is equivocal, see Chamberlain et al, 2009), and are indeed common at the study site.…”

Section: ; Damentioning

confidence: 81%

Behavioural plasticity in the onset of dawn song under intermittent experimental night lighting

2016

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The disruption of daily rhythms is one of the most studied ecological consequences of light pollution. Previous work showed that several songbird species initiated dawn song earlier in areas with light pollution. However, the mechanisms underlying this shift are still unknown. Individuals may immediately adjust their timing of singing to the presence of artificial light (behavioural plasticity), but the observed effect may also be due to phenotype-dependent habitat choice, effects of conditions during early life or micro-evolution. The main aim of this study was to experimentally investigate how males of four common passerine species respond to day-to-day variation in the presence of artificial night lighting in terms of the timing of singing. During two consecutive breeding seasons, we manipulated the presence of light throughout the night in a cyclic fashion in several naturally undisturbed forest patches. We show that individuals of all four species immediately and reversibly adjusted their onset of dawn singing in response to artificial light. The effect was strongest in the European robin, but relatively small in the blue tit, the great tit and the blackbird. The effect in the latter two species was smaller than expected from the correlational studies. This may be coincidence (small sample size of this study), but it could also indicate that there are longer-term effects of living in light-polluted urban areas on timing of dawn singing, or that birds use compensatory behaviours such as light avoidance. We found no evidence that our light treatment had carryover effects into the subsequent dark period, but robins progressively advanced their dawn singing during the light treatment.

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“…The following recent findings support this hypothesis: winter wrens (Amrhein & Erne ; Erne & Amrhein ) and black‐capped chickadees (Foote et al. ) increase their dawn singing after territorial intrusions; the dawn singing of eastern kingbirds (Sexton et al. ) and chipping sparrows (Liu ) are more intense when the males have more neighbors; banded wrens ( Thryothorus pleurostictus ) (Burt & Vehrencamp ) and black‐capped chickadees (Foote et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…The dawn chorus of male winter wrens ( Troglodytes troglodyges ) (Amrhein & Erne ; Erne & Amrhein ) and black‐capped chickadees (Foote et al. ) show a significant increase following territorial intrusions by other males. Non‐territorial male nightingales ( Luscinia megarhynchos ) use the dawn chorus to assess the singing of residents or the territory occupancy (Amrhein et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dawn Singing Intensity of the Male Brownish‐Flanked Bush Warbler: Effects of Territorial Insertions and Number of Neighbors

et al. 2014

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The dawn chorus is a period of peak singing activity of many songbirds. Numerous studies have sought to understand this widespread phenomenon, and many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the dawn chorus. The social dynamics hypothesis proposes that dawn singing plays an important role in the announcement of territorial occupancy and the regulation of social relationships between males; it predicts that the dawn chorus vocal behavior varies with changes in social relationships. In this study, we tested the influence of territorial insertions and the number of neighbors, on the intensity of the brownish‐flanked bush warbler (Cettia fortipes)'s dawn singing. We found that simulated territorial insertions (playback) caused the males to increase their dawn singing significantly the next day, and males that had many neighbors exhibited more intense dawn singing than did males with few neighbors. Our study provides evidence that dawn singing plays an important role in the announcement of territorial occupancy and the regulation of the social relationships between the males.

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Male black-capped chickadees begin dawn chorusing earlier in response to simulated territorial insertions

Cited by 32 publications

References 62 publications

Sleepless in Town – Drivers of the Temporal Shift in Dawn Song in Urban European Blackbirds

Sleepless in Town – Drivers of the Temporal Shift in Dawn Song in Urban European Blackbirds

Behavioural plasticity in the onset of dawn song under intermittent experimental night lighting

Dawn Singing Intensity of the Male Brownish‐Flanked Bush Warbler: Effects of Territorial Insertions and Number of Neighbors

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