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Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements

For territorial group-living species, opportunities to reproduce on the natal territory can be limited by a number of factors including the availability of resources within a territory, access to unrelated individuals, and monopolies on reproduction by dominant group members. Individuals looking to...

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Autores principales: Humphries, David J., Finch, Fiona M., Bell, Matthew B. V., Ridley, Amanda R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4503734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177094
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130795
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author Humphries, David J.
Finch, Fiona M.
Bell, Matthew B. V.
Ridley, Amanda R.
author_facet Humphries, David J.
Finch, Fiona M.
Bell, Matthew B. V.
Ridley, Amanda R.
author_sort Humphries, David J.
collection PubMed
description For territorial group-living species, opportunities to reproduce on the natal territory can be limited by a number of factors including the availability of resources within a territory, access to unrelated individuals, and monopolies on reproduction by dominant group members. Individuals looking to reproduce are therefore faced with the options of either waiting for a breeding opportunity to arise in the natal territory, or searching for reproductive opportunities in non-natal groups. In the cooperatively breeding Southern pied babbler, Turdoides bicolor, most individuals who achieve reproductive success do so through taking up dominant breeding positions within non-natal groups. For subordinate pied babblers therefore, searching for breeding opportunities in non-natal groups is of primary importance as this represents the major route to reproductive success. However, prospecting (where individuals leave the group to search for reproductive opportunities within other groups) is costly and individuals rapidly lose weight when not part of a group. Here we demonstrate that subordinate pied babblers adopt an alternative strategy for mate attraction by vocal advertisement from within their natal territories. We show that subordinates focus their calling efforts on the edges of their territory, and specifically near boundaries with neighbouring groups that have potential breeding partners (unrelated individuals of the opposite sex). In contrast to prospecting, calling individuals showed no body mass loss associated with this behaviour, suggesting that calling from within the group may provide a ‘cheap’ advertisement strategy. Additionally, we show that subordinates use information regarding the composition of neighbouring groups to target the greatest number of potential mating partners.
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spelling pubmed-45037342015-07-17 Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements Humphries, David J. Finch, Fiona M. Bell, Matthew B. V. Ridley, Amanda R. PLoS One Research Article For territorial group-living species, opportunities to reproduce on the natal territory can be limited by a number of factors including the availability of resources within a territory, access to unrelated individuals, and monopolies on reproduction by dominant group members. Individuals looking to reproduce are therefore faced with the options of either waiting for a breeding opportunity to arise in the natal territory, or searching for reproductive opportunities in non-natal groups. In the cooperatively breeding Southern pied babbler, Turdoides bicolor, most individuals who achieve reproductive success do so through taking up dominant breeding positions within non-natal groups. For subordinate pied babblers therefore, searching for breeding opportunities in non-natal groups is of primary importance as this represents the major route to reproductive success. However, prospecting (where individuals leave the group to search for reproductive opportunities within other groups) is costly and individuals rapidly lose weight when not part of a group. Here we demonstrate that subordinate pied babblers adopt an alternative strategy for mate attraction by vocal advertisement from within their natal territories. We show that subordinates focus their calling efforts on the edges of their territory, and specifically near boundaries with neighbouring groups that have potential breeding partners (unrelated individuals of the opposite sex). In contrast to prospecting, calling individuals showed no body mass loss associated with this behaviour, suggesting that calling from within the group may provide a ‘cheap’ advertisement strategy. Additionally, we show that subordinates use information regarding the composition of neighbouring groups to target the greatest number of potential mating partners. Public Library of Science 2015-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4503734/ /pubmed/26177094 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130795 Text en © 2015 Humphries et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Humphries, David J.
Finch, Fiona M.
Bell, Matthew B. V.
Ridley, Amanda R.
Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements
title Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements
title_full Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements
title_fullStr Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements
title_full_unstemmed Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements
title_short Calling Where It Counts: Subordinate Pied Babblers Target the Audience of Their Vocal Advertisements
title_sort calling where it counts: subordinate pied babblers target the audience of their vocal advertisements
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4503734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177094
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130795
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