Abstract
The Evolution of Animal Communication is a detailed examination of a wide variety of animal signalling systems. The main focus of the book is explaining how such signalling systems remain reliable when there is apparent evolutionary pressure to deceive. The principle strategy is to appeal to signal costs: signals remain reliable because the potential benefits of deceit are outweighed by the costs of producing the deceptive signal. In this review I show just how difficult this idea is to test, even in the simplest cases.
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Notes
Deceptive signalling systems would pose an inverse problem: why do the receivers of signalling systems still respond?
The puzzle of reliability isn’t the only point of interest for the study of animal signalling. The study of animal signalling systems prompts many questions. Do such signals carry information about the world, and, if so, what information is signalled? How do signalling systems evolve in the first place? Is the connection between signal form and what is signalled an completely arbitrary matter? Is signalling behaviour learned or is it innate? Can the study of animal signals be used as a window onto the minds of non-human animals? Are any animal signalling systems language-like? What are the physiological mechanisms that underlie signal production and registration?
See pp. 16–17, 214–218.
There is also a chapter on communication networks. I won’t be discussing this part of the book.
See, however, Getty (2006) for an argument that Grafen’s model should not be used in cases concerning sexual selection.
I am glossing over the complicated question of whether cases of sensory manipulation are examples of signalling.
Their third example concerns the tails of blue peafowl, where the relevant tail feature is the number of spots rather than length (p. 125).
See pp. 123–126.
See p. 124.
Over time the larynx of red deer has lowered, increasing the foment dispersion of their call. But since all the deer have done this, it is still a reliable indicator of size—this feature is now fixed in the population (Marynard Smith and Harper 2003, p. 46).
This point is also made in Kotiaho (2001).
Michael Jennions pointed out to me that there is a problem with Møller and de Lope’s study. The ideal experiment would compare the effects of increasing tail length on a low and a high quality male that both have the same initial tail length. That is, the ideal would be to start at the same place on the cost/benefit graph. But since the males to be compared have different tail lengths (the high quality males having longer tails), adding tail length to both and measuring the effects is starting at two different points on the cost/benefit graph.
The metabolic costs of producing and maintaining long tails might be linear. However, Searcy and Nowicki write, “Unfortunately, the developmental costs of elongated feather ornaments have not, to our knowledge, been investigated directly.” p. 128.
The target of Adams and Mesterton-Gibbons’ model is aggressive interactions between stomatopods. Stomatopods provide a particularly striking example of deception, as males who have recently moulted (hence are extremely vulnerable) nevertheless produce aggressive weapon displays when threatened.
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Saunders, S. Costly signalling: a work in progress. Biol Philos 24, 405–416 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-007-9100-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-007-9100-z