Reliability and the adaptive utility of discrimination among alarm callers

Blumstein, Daniel T.; Verneyre, Laure; Daniel, Janice C.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2808

Cited by 153 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…Previous work has demonstrated that marmots are capable of discriminating among individuals based on their calls alone [11], and that assessing perceived caller reliability is likely to be the key factor that has selected for the evolution of discrimination abilities [47]. However, if discriminating among kin is an important function of individually distinctive calls, we would expect these individually distinctive factors to be heritable [38,39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Ontogenetic variation of heritability and maternal effects in yellow-bellied marmot alarm calls

Blumstein¹,

Nguyen

Martin

2013

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Individuals of many species produce distinctive vocalizations that may relay potential information about the signaller. The alarm calls of some species have been reported to be individually specific, and this distinctiveness may allow individuals to access the reliability or kinship of callers. While not much is known generally about the heritability of mammalian vocalizations, if alarm calls were individually distinctive to permit kinship assessment, then call structure should be heritable. Here, we show conclusively for the first time that alarm call structure is heritable. We studied yellow-bellied marmots ( Marmota flaviventris ) and made nine quantitative measurements of their alarm calls. With a known genealogy, we used the animal model (a statistical technique) to estimate alarm call heritability. In juveniles, only one of the measured variables had heritability significantly different from zero; however, most variables had significant maternal environmental effects. By contrast, yearlings and adults had no significant maternal environmental effects, but the heritability of nearly all measured variables was significantly different from zero. Some, but not all of these heritable effects were significantly different across age classes. The presence of significantly non-zero maternal environmental effects in juveniles could reflect the impact of maternal environmental stresses on call structure. Regardless of this mechanism, maternal environmental effects could permit kinship recognition in juveniles. In older animals, the substantial genetic basis of alarm call structure suggests that calls could be used to assess kinship and, paradoxically, might also suggest a role of learning in call structure.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Ontogenetic variation of heritability and maternal effects in yellow-bellied marmot alarm calls

Blumstein¹,

Nguyen

Martin

2013

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Consequently, as has been predicted theoretically (28), false alarms may be an inevitable corollary of adaptive collective response in a dangerous and uncertain world. Previous observations of animal groups have found false alarms to be common, often accounting for a large proportion of overall alarms (50)(51)(52)(53).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing the hidden networks of interaction in mobile animal groups allows prediction of complex behavioral contagion

Rosenthal¹,

Twomey

Hartnett³

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

412

453

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Coordination among social animals requires rapid and efficient transfer of information among individuals, which may depend crucially on the underlying structure of the communication network. Establishing the decision-making circuits and networks that give rise to individual behavior has been a central goal of neuroscience. However, the analogous problem of determining the structure of the communication network among organisms that gives rise to coordinated collective behavior, such as is exhibited by schooling fish and flocking birds, has remained almost entirely neglected. Here, we study collective evasion maneuvers, manifested through rapid waves, or cascades, of behavioral change (a ubiquitous behavior among taxa) in schooling fish (Notemigonus crysoleucas). We automatically track the positions and body postures, calculate visual fields of all individuals in schools of ∼150 fish, and determine the functional mapping between socially generated sensory input and motor response during collective evasion. We find that individuals use simple, robust measures to assess behavioral changes in neighbors, and that the resulting networks by which behavior propagates throughout groups are complex, being weighted, directed, and heterogeneous. By studying these interaction networks, we reveal the (complex, fractional) nature of social contagion and establish that individuals with relatively few, but strongly connected, neighbors are both most socially influential and most susceptible to social influence. Furthermore, we demonstrate that we can predict complex cascades of behavioral change at their moment of initiation, before they actually occur. Consequently, despite the intrinsic stochasticity of individual behavior, establishing the hidden communication networks in large self-organized groups facilitates a quantitative understanding of behavioral contagion.T he social transmission of behavioral change is central to collective animal behavior. For many mobile groups, such as schooling fish and flocking birds, social contagion can be fast, resulting in dramatic waves of response (1-6). Such waves are evident in particular when individuals are under threat of attack from predators (1). Despite the ubiquity and importance of behavioral contagion, and the fact that survival depends on how individual interactions scale to collective properties (2), we still know very little about the sensory basis and mechanism of such coordinated collective response.In the early 20th century, Edmund Selous proposed that rapid waves of turning in large flocks of birds resulted from a direct transference of thoughts among animals: "They must think collectively, all at the same time. . . a flash out of so many brains" (3). By the mid-1950s, however, attention had turned from telepathy to synchrony arising from the rapid transmission of local behavioral response to neighbors, with some of the first experimental studies of cascading behavioral change undertaken by Dimitrii Radakov (4). Radakov (4) hand-traced the paths of each fish, frame-by-fram...

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“…A third explanation is that including mimicry simulates a chorus of alarm calling species, thereby increasing the perceived urgency or reliability of alarm information. Not only may alarm calls from multiple callers be a more reliable indication of danger than alarm calls from a lone caller [25,26], but more dangerous predators, such as hawks, generally provoke aerial alarms from multiple species [27]. Regardless of the exact mechanism, we show that mimicry confers an anti-predator advantage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…As no flying predator is present, the production of aerial alarm calls by thornbills during nest defence conveys inaccurate information about danger and may serve to deceive predators into responding as if they themselves are in immediate danger from above [14,24]. Mimicking a chorus of aerial alarm calls may also simulate multiple callers, a reliable indication of immediate danger [20,[25][26][27], which may increase the effectiveness of deception.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crying wolf to a predator: deceptive vocal mimicry by a bird protecting young

et al. 2015

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Animals often mimic dangerous or toxic species to deter predators; however, mimicry of such species may not always be possible and mimicry of benign species seems unlikely to confer anti-predator benefits. We reveal a system in which a bird mimics the alarm calls of harmless species to fool a predator 40 times its size and protect its offspring against attack. Our experiments revealed that brown thornbills (Acanthiza pusilla) mimic a chorus of other species' aerial alarm calls, a cue of an Accipiter hawk in flight, when predators attack their nest. The absence of any flying predators in this context implies that these alarms convey deceptive information about the type of danger present. Experiments on the primary nest predators of thornbills, pied currawongs (Strepera graculina), revealed that the predators treat these alarms as if they themselves are threatened by flying hawks, either by scanning the sky for danger or fleeing, confirming a deceptive function. In turn, these distractions delay attack and provide thornbill nestlings with an opportunity to escape. This sophisticated defence strategy exploits the complex web of interactions among multiple species across several trophic levels, and in particular exploits a predator's ability to eavesdrop on and respond appropriately to heterospecific alarm calls. Our findings demonstrate that prey can fool predators by deceptively mimicking alarm calls of harmless species, suggesting that defensive mimicry could be more widespread because of indirect effects on predators within a web of eavesdropping.

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Reliability and the adaptive utility of discrimination among alarm callers

Cited by 153 publications

References 31 publications

Ontogenetic variation of heritability and maternal effects in yellow-bellied marmot alarm calls

Ontogenetic variation of heritability and maternal effects in yellow-bellied marmot alarm calls

Revealing the hidden networks of interaction in mobile animal groups allows prediction of complex behavioral contagion

Crying wolf to a predator: deceptive vocal mimicry by a bird protecting young

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