Reliable aggressive signalling in swamp sparrows

Ballentine, Barbara; Searcy, William A.; Nowicki, Stephen

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.07.025

Cited by 111 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Seeley 1997). In hermit crabs, Pagurus bernhardus (Laidre 2009), swamp sparrows, Melospiza georgiana (Ballentine et al 2008), and banded wrens, Pheugopedius pleurostictus (Vehrencamp et al 2007), certain visual or vocal displays are reliable predictors of an individual's subsequent aggressive behaviour, and recipients respond as if they know this relation. The begging calls of cliff swallows, Hirundo pyrrhonota, are individually distinctive and provide parents with information about individual identity; the begging calls of barn swallows, H. rustica, do not (Medvin et al 1993).…”

Section: Information In Animal Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

et al. 2010

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Keywords:animal communication animal signal information information transmission language meaningThe concept of information plays a central role in studies of animal communication. Animals' responses to the calls of different individuals, to food calls, alarm calls, and to signals that predict behaviour, all suggest that recipients acquire information from signals and that this information affects their response. Some scientists, however, want to replace the concept of information with one based on the 'manipulation' of recipients by signallers through the induction of nervous-system responses. Here we review both theory and data that argue against hypotheses based exclusively on manipulation or on a fixed, obligatory link between a signal's physical features and the responses it elicits. Results from dozens of studies indicate that calls with 'arousing' or 'aversive' features may also contain information that affects receivers' responses; that acoustically similar calls can elicit different responses; acoustically different calls can elicit similar responses; and 'eavesdropping' animals respond to the relationship instantiated by signal sequences. Animal signals encode a surprisingly rich amount of information. The content of this information can be studied scientifically.

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Section: Information In Animal Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

et al. 2010

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“…Strong contextual evidence from a number of songbird species suggests that, as in crickets, SRS functions primarily in courtship (e.g., Titus 1998;Balsby 2000;Balsby andDabelsteen 2002, 2003;Collins et al 2009). However, the only studies of songbirds thus far to include both contextual and receiver response data indicate that SRS functions only as an elevated aggressive signal (Dabelsteen and Pedersen 1990;Searcy and Beecher 2009) and identified soft LRS as an accurate predictor of physical attack (Searcy et al 2006;Ballentine et al 2008;Hof and Hazlett 2010). Thus, the relative importance of low-amplitude songs in male-male and male-female interactions in songbirds remains unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deciphering Information Encoded in Birdsong: Male Songbirds with Fertile Mates Respond Most Strongly to Complex, Low-Amplitude Songs Used in Courtship

Reichard

Rice

Vanderbilt

et al. 2011

The American Naturalist

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. We compared responses of males whose mates were fertile or nonfertile with differences in song structure (SRS vs. LRS and soft LRS), amplitude (SRS and soft LRS vs. LRS), and tempo (slow SRS vs. fast SRS). Males responded more strongly to SRS than to LRS or soft LRS, indicating that song structure had a greater effect on response than song amplitude. SRS tempo did not detectably affect male response. Importantly, males responded more strongly to SRS when their mates were fertile, presumably because hearing SRS can indicate that a male's mate is being courted by an intruding male and a strong response can deter extrapair competitors. We conclude that lowamplitude songs can function in both inter-and intrasexual communication and should receive greater attention in future studies of mate choice and male-male competition.

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“…The subject's distance score was calculated by averaging across the 8 min playback. We also recorded whether the subject flew over the speaker, sang or gave a wing-wave display, a visual signal that reliably predicts attack in swamp sparrows [27]. To generate a measure of male response, we applied a principal components analysis to our scaled, Box-Cox transformed results, using the prcomp function in R [28].…”

Section: (C) Male Response Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Typical versions of learned swamp sparrow song types are more effective signals than are less typical versions

et al. 2014

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The learned songs of songbirds often cluster into population-wide types. Here, we test the hypothesis that male and female receivers respond differently to songs depending on how typical of those types they are. We used computational methods to cluster a large sample of swamp sparrow (Melospiza georgiana) songs into types and to estimate the degree to which individual song exemplars are typical of these types. We then played exemplars to male and female receivers. Territorial males responded more aggressively and captive females performed more sexual displays in response to songs that are highly typical than to songs that are less typical. Previous studies have demonstrated that songbirds distinguish song types that are typical for their species, or for their population, from those that are not. Our results show that swamp sparrows also discriminate typical from less typical exemplars within learned song-type categories. In addition, our results suggest that more typical versions of song types function better, at least in male-female communication. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that syllable type typicality serves as a proxy for the assessment of song learning accuracy.

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Reliable aggressive signalling in swamp sparrows

Cited by 111 publications

References 51 publications

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

Deciphering Information Encoded in Birdsong: Male Songbirds with Fertile Mates Respond Most Strongly to Complex, Low-Amplitude Songs Used in Courtship

Typical versions of learned swamp sparrow song types are more effective signals than are less typical versions

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