Nestling barn owls assess short-term variation in the amount of vocally competing siblings
Autor: | Amélie N. Dreiss, Charlène A. Ruppli, Alexandre Roulin |
---|---|
Rok vydání: | 2013 |
Předmět: |
Male
0106 biological sciences Competitive Behavior Experimental and Cognitive Psychology CONTEST 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Predation Animals 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences 050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Competition Numerical ability Sibling negotiation Vocal communication biology Barn-owl 05 social sciences Tyto Feeding Behavior Competitor analysis Clutch Size Strigiformes biology.organism_classification Brood Variation (linguistics) Animals Newborn Auditory Perception Female Vocalization Animal Barn Psychology Social psychology Demography |
Zdroj: | Animal Cognition Animal Cognition, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 993-1000 |
ISSN: | 1435-9456 1435-9448 |
Popis: | Assessing the amount of rivals is crucial to optimally adjust investment into a contest. If laboratory animals show numerical abilities, little is known about the ecological implications particularly in young animals. The two to nine barn owl (Tyto alba) siblings vocally compete for priority of access to food resources before parents actually deliver them. In dyads, the individual that vocalizes at the highest rate in the absence of parents deters its siblings from competing for next delivered prey. We tested the novel hypothesis that to optimally adjust vocal investment, barn owl nestlings assess how many of their siblings are currently competing. To singleton owlets, we broadcasted a fixed global number of calls emitted by one, two or four pre-recorded unfamiliar nestlings. We could thus distinguish the independent effect on singletons' vocal behavior of the global number of calls produced by a brood from the number of competitors that produced these calls. Overall, nestlings retreated more from vocal contest when facing more competitors. However, in front of one highly motivated competitor, nestlings refrained from vocalizing to a larger extent than when competing against more but less motivated individuals. Therefore, young animals assess variation in the number of currently competing siblings based on individual-specific vocal cues. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
Externí odkaz: |