Reading 5.1 Flower et al

Question 1

Hypothesis 1

Answer 1

• That wild drongos use vocal mimicry to flexibly vary their false alarm calls
• • This would increase (i) increase the likelihood of target deception and (ii) maintain target deception during repeated interactions.

Question 2

Hypothesis 2

Answer 2

Mimicry of target species alarms increases the intensity of target responses

Question 3

Study methods

Answer 3

• 64 wild drongo sample
  
  • Drongos spend over a quarter of their time following target species
  • Drongos produce many alarm call types
  • 688 food theft attempts
  • Four different call types played at 20 minute intervals from drongo specific to other species

Question 4

How many Drongos in the sample?

Answer 4

64

Question 5

How many food theft attempts were recorded?

Answer 5

688

Question 6

Experiment 2

Answer 6

• Played four treatments of three alarm calls to individual babblers

Question 7

Study results

Answer 7

• Drongos that are able to mimic a specific targets alarm call more frequently mimicked the target in food theft attmepts compared to attempts on other species
  • Alarm mimicry increased target deception
  • drongos were more likely to change the type of false alarm call when their previous food-theft attempt failed
  • they produce signals more likely to deceive their targets. Second, they avoid target habituation to repeated use of the same deceptive signal and thereby evade the frequency-dependent constraints that typically limit payoffs from deceptive communication
  • Drongos thus could benefit by flexibly varying their call type to maintain target deception

Question 8

Alarm mimicry increased…?

Answer 8

Target deception

Question 9

Drongos were more likely to change the type of false alarm call when…?

Answer 9

Their previous food-theft attempt failed

Question 10

What do the results mean in relation to the hypotheses being tested?

Answer 10

• Suggest a deceptive function for vocal mimicry, a behavior for which few adaptive benefits have been demonstrated
  • Shows that attending to feedback in deceptive communication may be adaptive, complementing recent research on feedback in other communication systems where individuals repeatedly interact
  • Species possess cognitive abilities, including mental state attribution, akin to theory of mind