Eavesdropping and contagious alarming in bird communities.

ABSTRACT: Eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm calls can provide valuable information about predator presence and therefore yield survival benefits. However, if, how, and why individuals react to heterospecific alarms is poorly known. If heterospecific alarms trigger a response, individuals might either stop their own vocal activity (acoustic suppression), to avoid being detected, or start alarming (acoustic stimulation), to warn conspecifics or deter predators. Here, we performed playback experiments with the alarms of 14 common forest passerine species and tested whether heterospecifics changed their acoustic behavior after playbacks and whether this involved suppression or stimulation. Moreover, we tested whether bird behavior was influenced by species-specific attributes such as escape capabili

SUBMITTER: Rossetto F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12615574 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature