An avian eavesdropping network: alarm signal reliability and heterospecific response

Alarm calls potentially provide information about predators to heterospecifics, but little is known about patterns of eavesdropping among species. Many cases of eavesdropping in birds and mammals involve social species in mixed-species groups, but this is not always true and the reliability of information may also be critical. We used a playback experiment and observations of natural alarm calling to test for understanding of aerial "hawk" alarms among 3 species of passerine and assess call reliability. Superb fairy-wrens and white-browed scrubwrens are ecologically similar and can share mixed... Mehr ...