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- Title
A possible phylogenetically conserved urgency response of great tits ( Parus major) towards allopatric mobbing calls.
- Authors
Randler, Christoph
- Abstract
Black-capped chickadees Poecile atricapillus alter the number of D notes of their chick-a-dee call to reflect urgency and threat. Here, I tested whether heterospecific responses of an allopatric species to these mobbing calls occur. Heterospecific chickadee mobbing calls and songs from North America were broadcast to European great tits ( Parus major) and compared with conspecific mobbing calls. During conspecific mobbing playbacks, all great tits approached the speaker, during the heterospecific 'chick-a-dee' playbacks, 63.3% individuals approached the speaker, while during the song playback, only 31.3% of the great tits approached the speaker. Minimum distances of great tits were lower during conspecific mobbing calls compared to allopatric chick-a-dee calls and to allopatric chickadee song. Also, minimum distances were lower when comparing allopatric chick-a-dee calls and chickadee song. Great tits approached the speaker on average down to (mean ± SE) 20.0 ± 1.8 m during playbacks of 1-4 D elements, to 17.7 ± 2.0 m during playbacks of 5-7 D elements and down to 11.5 ± 2.0 m during playbacks of 8-11 D elements. The number of D notes was inversely related to minimum distance. Thus, the urgency message encoded in the D notes was perceived also by an allopatric but phylogenetically related European species, suggesting that the heterospecific response is possibly phylogenetically conserved.
- Subjects
GREAT tit; PHYLOGENY; ANIMAL calls; BLACK-capped chickadee; MOBBING behavior (Animals); PASSERIFORMES
- Publication
Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, 2012, Vol 66, Issue 5, p675
- ISSN
0340-5443
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00265-011-1315-y