Heterospecific eavesdropping in ant-following birds of the Neotropics is a learned behaviour.

ABSTRACT: Animals eavesdrop on other species to obtain information about their environments. Heterospecific eavesdropping can yield tangible fitness benefits by providing valuable information about food resources and predator presence. The ability to eavesdrop may therefore be under strong selection, although extensive research on alarm-calling in avian mixed-species flocks has found only limited evidence that close association with another species could select for innate signal recognition. Nevertheless, very little is known about the evolution of eavesdropping behaviour and the mechanism of heterospecific signal recognition, particularly in other ecological contexts, such as foraging. To understand whether heterospecific eavesdropping was an innate or learned behaviour in a foraging context, we st

SUBMITTER: Pollock HS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5666105 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature