Presentation Details
| Who to trust? Mountain chickadees discriminate among social signalers to find food Sofia M Haley1, Virginia K Heinen1, Joseph F Welklin1, 2, Lauren E Whitenack1, Benjamin R Sonnenberg1, 3, Ai Ana Richmond1, Katherine A Johnson1, Carrie L Branch4, Vladimir V Pravosudov1. 1University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, USA.2Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA.3Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA.4Western University, London, ON, Canada |
Abstract
Chickadees are regarded for their vocal complexity, as they use a variety of different call types to communicate diverse information. Although much is known about the components, structure, and use of various chickadee calls, less is known about how chickadees select and use social information in their natural environments. Mountain chickadees reside in harsh montane environments where the cost of relying on social information may be particularly high. Through a series of feeder discovery experiments paired with playbacks, we tested if chickadees at high and low montane elevations showed a preference for food recruitment calls from either the same or a different elevation site. Chickadees at high elevations experience more selective pressure on spatial memory abilities involved in food caching and are thus predicted to be choosier about who they obtain social information from and how they communicate it. In contrast, low-elevation chickadees living in milder conditions may show weak preferences for what social information to use. Interestingly, we found that both high and low elevtion birds showed a preference for calls produced by high elevation birds.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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