The sensory substrate of multimodal communication in brown-headed cowbirds: are females sensory 'specialists' or 'generalists'?

ABSTRACT: Many animals communicate with multimodal signals. While we have an understanding of multimodal signal production, we know relatively less about receiver filtering of multimodal signals and whether filtering capacity in one modality influences filtering in a second modality. Most multimodal signals contain a temporal element, such as change in frequency over time or a dynamic visual display. We examined the relationship in temporal resolution across two modalities to test whether females are (1) sensory 'specialists', where a trade-off exists between the sensory modalities, (2) sensory 'generalists', where a positive relationship exists between the modalities, or (3) whether no relationship exists between modalities. We used female brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) to investigate this

SUBMITTER: Ronald KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6549732 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature