Alarm calls as costly signals of antipredator vigilance: the watchful babbler game

By Carl T. Bergstrom, M. Lachmann. Animal Behaviour, 2001

97 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Alarm-calling behaviour is common in many species that suffer from predation. While kin selection or reciprocal altruism are typically invoked to explain such behaviours, several authors have conjectured that some alarm calls may instead be costly signals sent by prey to inform approaching predators that they have been detected. We develop a general game-theoretical model, the watchful babbler game, in which prey signal awareness to predators. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for alarm calls to function as honest signals. We show that signals can honestly reveal prey awareness if (1) the prey's sense of predation risk accurately reflects the probability that the predator is present, and (2) greater awareness of the predator allows the prey a greater chance of escape. When honest signalling is possible, the model predicts that prey will be more willing to signal when predators are common than when predators are rare, and that greater pursuit costs to the predator will allow cheaper signals by the prey.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6260007b8505e68d2e77ed5318ac3852a2a0042a

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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In Sociology and Political Science

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Citations in the corpus

Alarm calls of tufted titmice convey information about predator size and threat (2010, background): “Longer and more intense mobbing bouts are likely adaptive and may cause a predator to evacuate the area (Pettifor 1990), alert the predator that it has been spotted and is no longer a threat (Haftorn 1999), warn kin of danger (Bergstrom and Lachmann 2001), and facilitate cooperation with conspecific”
Chapter 8 Survivor Signals (2009, background): “Bergstrom and Lachmann (2001) have generated a game-theoretical model, the watchful babbler game, aimed to explain why callers can benefit by signaling to a predator that it has been detected.”