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Tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) calling and risk-sensitive foraging in the face of threat

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Abstract

Individuals often produce alarm or mobbing calls when they detect a threat such as a predator. Little is known about whether such calling is affected by the facial orientation of a potential threat, however. We tested for an effect of facial orientation of a potential threat on tufted titmice, Baeolophus bicolor, a songbird that uses chick-a-dee calls in a variety of social contexts. In two studies, a human observer wore an animal mask that either faced or faced away from the focal bird(s). In Study 1, focal birds were individual titmice captured in a walk-in trap, and the observer stood near the trapped bird. In Study 2, focal birds were titmouse flocks utilizing a feeding station and the observer stood near the station. In both studies, calling behavior was affected by mask orientation. In Study 2, foraging and agonistic behavior were also affected. Titmice can therefore perceive the facial orientation of a potential threat, and this perception affects different behavioral systems, including calling. Our results indicate sensitivity of titmice to the facial orientation of a potential predator in two quite different motivational contexts. This work suggests the possibility of strategic signaling by prey species depending upon the perceptual space of a detected predator.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the staffs of Ijams Nature Center (Knoxville, TN), Norris Dam State Park (Norris, TN), and the University of Tennessee Forest Resources, Research, and Education Center (Oak Ridge, TN), for allowing us to record tufted titmice on their grounds. TMF acknowledges the support of a Fulbright Teaching Award to work at Daugavpils University, Latvia, which helped make some of this work possible. Thanks to Paige Crowden, Nicholas Hendershott, Rebecca Weiner, and Christy Whitt for assistance with data collection. Thanks to Julie Bartmess-LeVasseur, David Book, Sheri Browning, Christine Dahlin, David Gammon, Amiyaal Ilany, Arik Kershenbaum, John Marzluff, Jessica Owens, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on drafts of this manuscript, and finally to Gordon Burghardt for helpful discussions in 2009 that led to the initiation of this project.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standard

This work followed the ‘Guidelines for the Treatment of Animals in Behavioural Research and Teaching’ of the Animal Behavior Society and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour and was conducted under approved University of Tennessee Animal Care and Use Committee protocol No. 1248. The studies described here complied with the current laws of the USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Austin Peay Building 301B, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    Todd M. Freeberg

  2. Institute of Systematic Biology, Daugavpils University, Daugavpils, Latvia

    Tatjana Krama, Jolanta Vrublevska & Indriķis Krams

  3. Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Indriķis Krams

  4. Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Cecilia Kullberg

  5. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Todd M. Freeberg

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  1. Todd M. Freeberg
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  2. Tatjana Krama
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Correspondence to Todd M. Freeberg.

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Freeberg, T.M., Krama, T., Vrublevska, J. et al. Tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) calling and risk-sensitive foraging in the face of threat. Anim Cogn 17, 1341–1352 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0770-z

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