Abstract
Continued interest in multimodal signaling systems has resulted in new frameworks to understand the evolution and use of these complex signals. Most of these studies have focused on multimodal communication within a species (sexual and agonistic signaling), but members of different species also benefit by communicating through both eavesdropping and evolved signals. Here we develop a framework to understand interspecific multimodal signaling systems that asks three questions: (1) Is there an ecological incentive to communicate? (2) Is interspecific communication mechanistically possible? and (3) Is there a fitness consequence to this communication? Many aspects of multimodal signaling systems are expected to be similar within and across species, and signal reliability underlies all signaling. However, we identify unique constraints that apply to interspecific signaling systems: the need for overlapping sensory systems, sensory thresholds and cognitive abilities between the two species. This new framework should help identify the processes shaping multimodal signaling evolution in interspecific signaling systems.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Robert Magrath, Erick Greene, Mike Webster, Ray Callaway, and two anonymous reviewers for many constructive comments on previous versions of this manuscript, Nicole Munoz for discussions about multimodal assessment, and Pauhana for other support. A.B. was supported by the Dan Pletcher Memorial Scholarship and the Bertha Morton Scholarship from the University of Montana, and from a N.S.F. East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship (EAPSI). D.T.B. is supported by the N.S.F.
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Billings, A.C., Blumstein, D.T. (2020). A Framework to Understand Interspecific Multimodal Signaling Systems. In: Aubin, T., Mathevon, N. (eds) Coding Strategies in Vertebrate Acoustic Communication. Animal Signals and Communication, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39200-0_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39200-0_13
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