Effect of nestlings’ age on parental responses to a predatory snake in Parus minor

Abstract Predator-specific alarm calls may have a variety of context-specific functions. Parents of the oriental tit, Parus minor, use the ‘jar’ call in response to the presence of a snake near the nests, and the nestlings respond by escaping the nest cavity. This specific function can be observed o...

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Published inBehaviour Vol. 155; no. 4; pp. 327 - 336
Main Authors Ha, Jung Moon, Lee, Keesan, Yang, Eun Jeong, Kim, Woo Joo, Song, Ho Kyeong, Hwang, In Je, Lee, Sang-im, Jablonski, Piotr G
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Leiden|Boston Brill 2018
Brill Academic Publishers, Inc
Subjects
Alarm systems
Nests
Parents
Predators
Snakes
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Summary:Abstract Predator-specific alarm calls may have a variety of context-specific functions. Parents of the oriental tit, Parus minor, use the ‘jar’ call in response to the presence of a snake near the nests, and the nestlings respond by escaping the nest cavity. This specific function can be observed only when nestlings are able to fledge. Do tits use the ‘jar’ call only in a situation when nestlings are physically able to jump out of the nest? We measured parental responses to live snake in 8 nests. The use of ‘jar’ call by parents was not modified by the ability of their nestlings to escape out of the nest. This suggests that fledging in response to ‘jar’ call by old nestlings evolved later than the evolutionary emergence of referential snake alarm calls, and that the ancestral function of ‘jar’ call was probably not related to triggering of fledging in old nestlings.
ISSN:0005-7959
1568-539X
DOI:10.1163/1568539X-00003491