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Geographic variation in marmots’ alarm calls causes different responses

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Abstract

Geographic variation in acoustic signals has been investigated for five decades to better understand the evolution of communication. When receivers are able to discriminate among signals and to react accordingly, geographic variation can have major impacts on the ability of conspecifics to communicate. Surprisingly, geographic variation in alarm calls and its consequences for the communication process have been so far neglected despite their crucial role on individual survival. Working with four wild populations of Alpine marmots (Marmota marmota), we found differences in the acoustic structure of their alarm calls. These differences cannot be explained by geographic or genetic distances but more likely by other mechanisms including random processes. Moreover, playback experiments provided evidence that receivers discriminate between alarm calls from their own versus other populations, with responses at lower intensity when the alarm calls played back originated from their own population. Research on the mechanistic causes of geographic variation and on the relationship between alarm call variation, familiarity, and intelligibility of signal and behavioral responses is now required to better understand how predation pressure, and more widely natural selection, could drive the evolution of communication.

Significance statement

Dialects (i.e., geographic variation) can have major impacts on the ability of conspecifics to communicate. Surprisingly, dialects in alarm calls have been neglected despite their crucial role on survival of individuals. Alpine marmots have dialects in alarm calls and discriminate their own dialects from others, being more frightened by alarm calls from another population than by those from their own. Confronted with an unknown dialect, marmots may adopt a self-preserving strategy and choose to run away before assessing the danger.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all the students involved in marmot recording. We are grateful to the golf of Tignes for allowing us to work on its green. We are deeply grateful to the commune of Tignes for the use of the Santel chalet. In the Pyrenees, we warmly thank all the people involved in field campaigns and special thanks to A. Planella and M. Unzeta (supported by a COLAB grant from the Catalan Government). MFR thanks the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017 SGR 1006). We further acknowledge James F. Hare, D. Blumstein, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful and constructive comments and suggestions that helped us to improve a previous version of this paper. We also thank F. Kirkpatrick Baird for carefully editing this paper.

Funding

This project was supported by COLAB and SGR (2017 SGR 1006) grants from the Catalan Government.

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Author notes

  1. Thierry Lengagne and Mariona Ferrandiz-Rovira contributed equally to this manuscript and are designated for co-first authorship

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ Lyon, Université claude bernard Lyon1, ENTPE, CNRS, UMR 5023 LEHNA, 6 Rue Raphaël Dubois, F-69622, Villeurbanne, France

    Thierry Lengagne

  2. Laboratoire Biométrie et Biologie Évolutive, Université de Lyon, CNRS, UMR 5558, Université Lyon 1, 69622, Villeurbanne, 69000, Lyon, France

    Mariona Ferrandiz-Rovira, Clara Superbie & Aurélie Cohas

  3. CREAF, 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain

    Mariona Ferrandiz-Rovira, Irene Figueroa & Bernat Claramunt-Lopez

  4. BABVE Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain

    Mariona Ferrandiz-Rovira, Irene Figueroa & Bernat Claramunt-Lopez

  5. Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, 112 Science Place, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5E2, Canada

    Clara Superbie

  6. Institut für Vogelforschung “Vogelwarte Helgoland” (Institute of Avian Research), Wilhelmshaven, Germany

    Coraline Bichet

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  1. Thierry Lengagne
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Correspondence to Thierry Lengagne or Mariona Ferrandiz-Rovira.

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Ethical approval

All work adheres to the ASAB/ABS Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research. The laboratory “Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive” is authorized to use animals in research (arrêté préfectoral no. DDPP69-2013-008), the protocol was approved by the University of Lyon 1 Ethical Committee (CEEA-55, protocol BH2012-92-V1), and the authorization to capture Alpine marmots was issued by the Préfecture de Savoie (arrêté préfectoral no. 2013/02) after approval by the advisory committee of the Nature Reserve of La Grande Sassière. Fieldwork was conducted under permit number AP n82010/121 by the Préfecture de la Savoie. All handling and sampling were done by three co-authors (MFR, AC, and IF) who are authorized for the experimentation with animals by the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries or Catalan Government (diplomas 0ETRY20090520, R45GRETAF110, and 53707-UAB-FELASA).

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Lengagne, T., Ferrandiz-Rovira, M., Superbie, C. et al. Geographic variation in marmots’ alarm calls causes different responses. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 74, 97 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-020-02858-5

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