2004/02/17 by Frances R. Johnson, Elisabeth J. McNaughton, Courtney D. Shelley +2
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior #Plant and animal studies
paper · doi:10.1071/zo03031
openalex publication_date 2004/02/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Some birds emit special calls, referred to as mobbing calls, when they detect a predator in their area. These calls are easily localisable and function to rally other individuals to help chase out a threatening intruder. Interestingly, individuals may respond to the mobbing calls of other sympatric species. To understand the mechanism underlying interspecific recognition it is essential to determine whether birds also respond to the mobbing calls of allopatric species. If, as has been suggested, learning is important for call recognition, then calls from allopatric species should not evoke mobbing. If, however, there are intrinsic (and possibly convergent) characteristics of mobbing calls, then novel calls from allopatric species should evoke mobbing. We conducted two playback experiments with apostlebirds ( Struthidea cinera , Family Corcoracidae), Australian mud-nesters, to understand mechanisms underlying mobbing-call recognition. The first demonstrated that allopatric mobbing calls could elicit a response significantly greater than control stimuli, but less than that elicited by playback of conspecific calls. The second demonstrated that the dominant frequency was critical for eliciting mobbing, rather than the commonly assumed broad bandwidth. Taken together, these results suggest that experience with a particular species' call is not essential to elicit mobbing; rather, intrinsic aspects of the calls themselves may explain heterospecific recognition.