Nuthatches eavesdrop on variations in heterospecific chickadee mobbing alarm calls
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Many animals recognize the alarm calls produced by other species, but the amount of information they glean from these eavesdropped signals is unknown. We previously showed that black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) have a sophisticated alarm call system in which they encode complex information about the size and risk of potential predators in variations of a single type of mobbing alarm call. Here we show experimentally that red-breasted nuthatches (Sitta canadensis) respond appropriately to subtle variations of these heterospecific "chick-a-dee" alarm calls, thereby evidencing that they have gained important information about potential predators in their environment. This study demonstrates a previously unsuspected level of discrimination in intertaxon eavesdropping.
Authors: Christopher N. Templeton, Erick Greene
Institutions: University of Washington, University of Montana
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Institutes of Health
OpenAlex ID: W1968472235