02627nas a2200217   4500008004100000022001300041245009400054210006900148260001600217300001400233490000800247520193000255653002702185653001602212653002702228653002502255653001802280100002102298700002402319856006602343       2017                        eng d  a0003347200aFunctionally referential alarm calls in noisy miners communicate about predator behaviour0 aFunctionally referential alarm calls in noisy miners communicate  cJan-07-2017  a171 - 1790 v1293 a<p>Many vertebrates have alarm calls that warn conspecifics about danger, and some species even communicate about the type of predator or its behaviour, allowing for appropriate responses. However, such &lsquo;functionally referential&rsquo; communication has been shown experimentally in only a handful of species, and requires demonstrating that individuals give acoustically distinct calls to different threats, and that the calls alone are sufficient to prompt listeners to behave as if a specific threat is present. We carried out model presentations, acoustic analyses and a playback experiment to test whether the alarm calls of noisy miners, Manorina melanocephala, are functionally referential. Miners gave different calls to airborne raptor models compared to terrestrial or perched raptor models, and even switched from &lsquo;aerial&rsquo; alarm calls to &lsquo;chur&rsquo; alarm calls when a hawk glider landed on the ground. They also behaved differently to these two types of threats, showing avoidance to aerial threats, including fleeing or freezing, but deterrent behaviour to terrestrial threats, including vigilance, approach and mobbing. The two alarm call types were acoustically distinct, and consistent with calls to live predators. Blind scoring of video revealed that birds responded appropriately to playbacks of alarm calls alone, typically fleeing to aerial alarm calls yet becoming vigilant, approaching and calling to chur calls. Noisy miners produce alarm calls that therefore meet both criteria for functional reference, and thus become one of the few bird species in which such calls have been confirmed. Many birds appear to give different calls to airborne predators compared to during mobbing of terrestrial or stationary predators, so functionally referential alarms are likely to be common and may often categorize predators by their behaviour and not simply their taxonomic type.</p>
10aacoustic communication10aalarm calls10aantipredator behaviour10afunctional reference10amobbing calls1 aCunningham, Sean1 aMagrath, Robert, D.  uhttp://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S000334721730158602611nas a2200253   4500008004100000022001300041245011700054210006900171260001600240300001100256490000800267520180900275653002202084653002102106653001902127653002502146653002102171653001202192653002202204100001902226700002402245700002202269856006602291       2017                        eng d  a0003347200aCalling for help: dwarf mongoose recruitment calls inform receivers about context and elicit disparate responses0 aCalling for help dwarf mongoose recruitment calls inform receive  cJan-05-2017  a7 - 140 v1273 a<p>Social complexity and communicative complexity appear to have coevolved in terrestrial vertebrates. Understanding the information conveyed within the social signals of group-living taxa can illuminate the selection pressures impacting on a species and help to identify the factors promoting sociality. Within vocal communication, recruitment calls are of great importance to many social species, helping to maintain group cohesion and facilitating cooperative behaviour. Yet recruitment vocalizations have received limited scientific attention and it is not clear whether they convey context-specific information to receivers. We investigated the recruitment calls of wild dwarf mongooses, Helogale parvula, to ascertain whether they showed context-specific acoustic differences and whether receivers displayed context-specific responses to recruitment calls in the absence of external cues. We recorded recruitment calls (from four wild groups of dwarf mongooses) from two contexts: when an individual became separated from its group and when an individual encountered a snake. Acoustic analysis revealed that calls from the two contexts differed in acoustic structure and were distinguishable with a discriminant function analysis. Playbacks of calls from both contexts successfully recruited target mongooses, but snake calls elicited a stronger reaction (with mongooses vigilant for longer and approaching the speaker more closely). More importantly, target mongooses also displayed behaviours that were unique to call context, exhibiting head bobbing, creeping and searching of the vegetation during snake call playbacks but never during isolation call playbacks. We conclude that dwarf mongoose recruitment calls refer to context and are perceived as functionally referential by receivers.</p>
10aacoustic analysis10acontext-specific10adwarf mongoose10afunctional reference10aHelogale parvula10amobbing10arecruitment calls1 aRubow, Janneke1 aCherry, Michael, I.1 aSharpe, Lynda, L.  uhttp://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0003347217300659