title: Nuthatches eavesdrop on variations in heterospecific chickadee mobbing alarm calls.
abstract: Many animals recognize the alarm calls produced by other species, but the amount of information they glean from these eavesdropped signals is unknown. We previously showed that black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) have a sophisticated alarm call system in which they encode complex information about the size and risk of potential predators in variations of a single type of mobbing alarm call. Here we show experimentally that red-breasted nuthatches (Sitta canadensis) respond appropriately to subtle variations of these heterospecific "chick-a-dee" alarm calls, thereby evidencing that they have gained important information about potential predators in their environment. This study demonstrates a previously unsuspected level of discrimination in intertaxon eavesdropping.
authors: Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. ctemple2@u.wshington.edu
authors: Christopher N
authors: CN
authors: Templeton
authors: Erick
authors: E
authors: Greene
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003142:Communication; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D020308:Songbirds / Q000502:physiology*; D020305:Strigiformes; D014828:Vocalization, Animal