Functionally Referential Alarm Calls in Tamarins (Saguinus fuscicollis and Saguinus mystax) – Evidence from Playback Experiments
By Jan Kirchhof, K. Hammerschmidt. 2006
123 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Studies on primate vocalisation have revealed different types of alarm call systems ranging from graded signals based on response urgency to functionally referential alarm calls that elicit predator-specific reactions. In addition, alarm call systems that include both highly specific and other more unspecific calls have been reported. There has been consistent discussion on the possible factors leading to the evolution of different alarm call systems, among which is the need of qualitatively different escape strategies. We studied the alarm calls of free-ranging saddleback and moustached tamarins (Saguinus fuscicollis and Saguinus mystax) in northeast Peru. Both species have predator-specific alarm calls and show specific non-vocal reactions. In response to aerial predators, they look upwards and quickly move downwards, while in response to terrestrial predators, they look downwards and sometimes approach the predator. We conducted playback experiments to test if the predator-specific reactions could be elicited in the absence of the predator by the tamarins' alarm calls alone. We found that in response to aerial alarm call playbacks the subjects looked significantly longer upwards, and in response to terrestrial alarm call playbacks they looked significantly longer downwards. Thus, the tamarins reacted as if external referents, i.e. information about the predator type or the appropriate reaction, were encoded in the acoustic features of the calls. In addition, we found no differences in the responses of S. fuscicollis and S. mystax whether the alarm call stimulus was produced by a conspecific or a heterospecific caller. Furthermore, it seems that S. fuscicollis terrestrial alarm calls were less specific than either S. mystax terrestrial predator alarms or either species' aerial predator alarms, but because of the small sample size it is difficult to draw a final conclusion.
Subfields: Developmental Biology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ca01d6ecedbea9c1209ea14cb9d2460cb64e32b9
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Citations in the corpus
- Predation Risk and Antipredator Strategies (2009, background): “In broad terms, reactions are either passive (avoidance, hiding or fleeing) or active (mobbing or monitoring), and vary systematically within a species according to the type of predator (Caine 1993; Kirchhof and Hammerschmidt 2006 ).”
- Production and perception of situationally variable alarm calls in wild tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella nigritus) (2010, background): “Indeed, several studies have shown that predatorassociated calls that are also given in nonpredatory contexts still regularly elicit predator-specific reactions despite their low levels of context specificity (e.g., Fichtel and Kappeler 2002; Kirchhof and Hammerschmidt 2006; current study).”
- Alarm calls of tufted titmice convey information about predator size and threat (2010, background): “…some species, alarm calls may provide specific information about the type of predator present (functionally referential; Pereira and Macedonia 1991; Kirchhof and Hammerschmidt 2006), the level of threat a predator poses (urgency based; Welbergen and Davies 2008), or both (Manser et al. 2002;…”
- Structure and Usage of the Vocal Repertoire of Callithrix jacchus (2008, background): “For example, when confronted with aerial predators, tamarins tend to look upward more frequently than usual and move to lower parts of the tree, whereas when confronted with terrestrial predators, they tend to look downward and sometimes mob the predator (Kirchhof and Hammerschmidt 2006).”