The costs and benefits of a vocal signal: the nest-associated ‘Chit’ of the female red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus

doi:10.1016/S0003-3472(89)80118-6

Animal Behaviour

Volume 38, Issue 5, November 1989, Pages 866-874

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(89)80118-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

Understanding the function of behaviour requires analysis of fitness costs and benefits, but this is difficult because methods of assessment are usually lacking. In this paper the results of an experimental analysis of costs and benefits of a vocal signal, the nest-associated calls during arrival and departure from their nests, and while on their nests. The intersexual ‘Chit’ was the call most often given in these contexts, and was frequently given in answer to the songs of mates. To assess the potential cost of nest-associated calling, mock nests containing plaster eggs were placed at suitable nest sites. Nests accompanied by playback of tape-recorded Chit calls were depredated at higher rates than nests without playback. Mock nests were also used to assess the potential benefit of nest-associated calling. Nests accompanied by playback were more strongly defended against a simulated predator by male red-winged blackbirds than nests without playback. To estimate the net benefit of nest-associated calling, the vocal behaviour of successful (produced at least one fledgling) and unsuccessful (nest depredated) females was compared. Reproductively successful females answered the songs of their mates with Chit calls from the nest more often than unsuccessful females. Nest-associated Chits thus appear to confer a net benefit on female red-winged blackbirds by maintaining the vigilance of males against nest predators.

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Understanding the patterns and processes related to sexual dimorphism and sex differences in diverse animal taxa is a foundational research topic in ecology and evolution. Within the realm of animal communication, studies have traditionally focused on male signals, assuming that female choice and male–male competition have promoted sex differences via elaboration of male traits, but selection on females also has the potential to drive divergence. Here, we describe female song in barn swallows, Hirundo rustica erythrogaster, for the first time, report rates of female song production and couple song data with plumage data to explore the relative degree to which sex differences in phenotypic traits are consistent with contemporary selection on males versus females. During previous intensive study of male song over 2 years, we opportunistically recorded songs for 15 females, with matched phenotypic and fitness data. We randomly selected 15 high-quality samples from our larger male data set to test whether sex differences in song and plumage are more strongly associated with fledgling success for females or genetic paternity for males. Analyses included 35 potential sexual signals including 22 song parameters and 13 plumage traits. Outcomes indicate that female songs were used in multiple contexts, restricted primarily to the beginning of the breeding season; song traits showed greater sexual differentiation than visual plumage traits; and trait correlations with reproductive success in females, rather than males, predicted sex-based differences in song and plumage. These results are consistent with phylogenetic studies showing that sex-based phenotypic differences are driven by changes in females, highlighting the potential role of female trait evolution in explaining patterns of sexual differentiation. To achieve a better understanding of sex differences and dimorphism, we require comprehensive studies that measure the same traits in males and females and their fitness consequences.
The Functions of Female Calls in Birds
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Citation Excerpt :
Additionally, male nest guarding is expected to increase when females are calling. The male vigilance recruiting hypothesis was first investigated in red-winged blackbirds, in which females utter a female-specific “chit” call in response to male song from the nest or during nest departure/arrival (Yasukawa, 1989; see also Section 2.1.4). Dummy nests associated with “chit” calls were found to be more depredated than dummy nests without chit calls.
Birds’ vocalizations commonly are categorized in two types: songs and calls. Yet, the study of avian vocalizations is male-biased and most of research to date has focused on male song. Even though female song is of growing interest in recent years, studies on female-specific calls or female-typical calls are scattered and various hypotheses have been suggested about their functions. We here review the main hypotheses regarding the functions of female-specific or female-typical calls in birds, outline the main predictions arising from these hypotheses, and describe descriptive and experimental studies supporting them. Most hypotheses to explain female call function are not mutually exclusive; a single call may serve multiple functions at a given time or at different stages of the reproductive cycle. No hypothesis alone seems like it can explain the diversity of the female calls across species. This diversity in function of female calls probably results from a diversity of evolutionary pressures, beyond that of sexual selection alone. Of particular interest for future work will be experimental approaches on the breeder-need hypothesis, the self-stimulation hypothesis, and the species/mother recognition hypothesis. Our understanding of the functions of female calls will also be aided by attention to mechanisms underlying their utterance, with attention to topics such as neuroendocrine mechanisms, ontogenetic processes, the redundancy of calls with other signals, and variation in calls between and within individuals.
Incubating females signal their needs during intrapair vocal communication at the nest: a feeding experiment in great tits
2016, Animal Behaviour
Parental care is a key factor of breeding success and parents face evolutionary trade-offs between investment in current offspring and future reproduction and survival. Incubation in birds is energetically costly and the balance between parental and offspring's energetic needs is especially challenging when only one sex incubates, generally the female. In that case, males can contribute indirectly to incubation effort by feeding their mate and females may use begging behaviours to signal their needs to their visiting partner. The great tit, Parus major, is a good model species to test whether females use acoustic communication from the nest to signal their needs to their mate outside because females interact vocally with their mate during incubation. To test whether females use these vocal exchanges to communicate how hungry they are, great tit pairs were recorded on 2 days during incubation: 1 day with a feeder of mealworms in the nestbox and 1 day with an empty feeder. First, food supplementation increased females' nest attentiveness, revealing a decrease in foraging activity and consequently in females' needs. Second, females signalled their need for food both during their male's visits inside the nest but also during the vocal exchange immediately preceding the male's entrance by calling more and by modifying the frequency spectrum of their calls. So females' calling behaviour is an honest signal of need not only during their male's visits, but also before his entrance in the nest.
Songbird mates change their call structure and intrapair communication at the nest in response to environmental noise
2016, Animal Behaviour
The coordination of behaviours between mates is a central aspect of the biology of the monogamous pair bonding in birds. This coordination may rely on intrapair acoustic communication, which is surprisingly poorly understood. Here we examined the impact of an increased level of background noise on intrapair acoustic communication at the nest in the zebra finch, Taeniopygia guttata. We monitored how partners adapted their acoustic interactions in response to a playback of wind noise inside the nestbox during incubation. Both zebra finch parents incubate and use coordinated call duets when they meet at the nest. The incubating parent can vocalize to its partner either outside the nestbox (sentinel duets) or inside the nestbox (relief and visit duets), depending on the context of the meeting. Pairs use these duets to communicate on predation threats (sentinel duets), incubation duties (relief) and other nesting activities (visit duets). Each of these duets probably represents a critical component of pair coordination. In response to the noise playback, partners called less and more rapidly during visit and relief duets. Female and male calls were more regularly and precisely alternated during relief duets. Mates increased the number of visit duets and their spatial proximity during sentinel duets. Furthermore, both females and males produced louder, higher-frequency and less broadband calls. Taken together our results show that birds use several strategies to adjust to noise during incubation, underlining the importance of effective intrapair communication for breeding pairs.
Impact of visual contact on vocal interaction dynamics of pair-bonded birds
2015, Animal Behaviour
Animal social interactions usually revolve around several sensory modalities. For birds, these are primarily visual and acoustic. However, some habitat specificities or long distances may temporarily hinder or limit visual information transmission making acoustic transmission a central channel of communication even during complex social behaviours. Here we investigated the impact of visual limitation on the vocal dynamics between zebra finch, Taeniopygia guttata, partners. Pairs were acoustically recorded during a separation and reunion protocol with gradually decreasing distance without visual contact. Without visual contact, pairs displayed more correlated vocal exchanges than with visual contact. We also analysed the turn-taking sequences of individuals' vocalizations during an exchange with or without visual contact. In the absence of visual contact, the identity of a vocalizing individual was well predicted by the knowledge of the identity of the previous vocalizer. This property is characteristic of a stochastic process called a Markov chain and we found that turn-taking sequences of birds deprived of visual contact were Markovian. Thus, both the temporal correlation between the calls of the two partners and Markov properties of acoustic interactions indicate that, in the absence of visual cues, the decision to call is taken on a very short-term basis and solely on acoustic information (both temporal and identity of caller). Strikingly, when individuals were in visual contact both these features of their acoustic social interactions disappeared indicating that birds adapted their calling dynamics to cope with limited visual cues.
Phenotypic plasticity in nest departure calls: Weighing costs and benefits
2014, Animal Behaviour
In birds, male song has been extensively studied, but female vocalizations have received little attention. Females of several North American species produce a unique vocalization, the nest departure call (NDC), upon leaving nests. Producing NDCs has costs due to acoustical properties that make nests easy to locate by predators. Thus, NDCs must also have benefits that balance or outweigh costs, and females should modulate call production as costs and benefits change. We explored whether female song sparrows, Melospiza melodia, adjust calling rate to reflect differential costs and benefits of calling induced by male presence, male quality (measured by body mass and song complexity), nest predator presence and nest height. Results suggest that calls benefit females by promoting male nest guarding and that females display adaptive plasticity in call production. Specifically, calling rate increased when the male was present, and male nest guarding increased when females gave an NDC. Females called less in the presence of a model nest predator, probably because the perceived costs of predator attraction outweighed the benefits of male recruitment. Conversely, females with heavier mates called more, perhaps because the efficacy of male nest guarding increases with mass. In addition, females called more from elevated nests in the presence of the predator and decreased calling later in the day. Male song complexity failed to predict calling rate, suggesting that this sexually selected trait does not reflect direct benefits gained by producing an NDC. Plasticity in calling probably exists because context-appropriate communication elevates fitness, whereas contextual mistakes in the decision to communicate result in fitness declines.

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Animal Behaviour

Abstract

References (32)

An investigation of individual recognition by voice in female red-winged blackbirds

Anim. Behav.

A sentinel system in the Florida scrubjay

Anim. Behav.

Seasonal change in the vocal behaviour of female red-winged blackbirds, Agelaius phoeniceus

Anim. Behav.

Aggressive and pair-bond maintenance songs of female red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Z. Tierpsychol.

Intersexual song answering in redwinged blackbirds

Can. J. Zool.

Communication by changing signals: call switching in red-winged blackbirds

Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.

Nest associated vocalizations of female red-winged blackbirds, Agelaius phoeniceus

Z. Tierpsychol.

Vocalizations of female red-winged blackbirds inhibit sexual harassment

Wilson Bull.

Alternative male strategies: genetic differences in crickets

Science, N.Y.

The vocal behavior of female red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Male characteristics, parental quality and the study of mate choice in the red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.

Aggressive and territorial behavior in female red-winged blackbirds

Can. J. Zool.

Predation of red-winged blackbird nests by mink

Condor

Why does intensity of avian nest defense increase during the nesting cycle?

Auk

Nest-defense behavior in the red-winged blackbird

Condor

Cited by (71)

Analysis of female song provides insight into the evolution of sex differences in a widely studied songbird

The Functions of Female Calls in Birds

Incubating females signal their needs during intrapair vocal communication at the nest: a feeding experiment in great tits

Songbird mates change their call structure and intrapair communication at the nest in response to environmental noise

Impact of visual contact on vocal interaction dynamics of pair-bonded birds

Phenotypic plasticity in nest departure calls: Weighing costs and benefits