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The effect of mobbing vocalizations on risk perception in common mynas (Acridotheres tristis)

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Abstract

Animals emit predator-elicited calls in response to potential predation threats. These vocalizations induce a variety of anti-predator behaviors in conspecific receivers ranging from moving away from predators (alarm calls) to rallying conspecifics to fend them off (mobbing calls). While much is known about the immediate response to alarm calls, less is known about how mobbing calls influence subsequent antipredator decisions. Mobbing calls stimulate harassment of a potential predator. Therefore we predicted that hearing a mobbing call would make animals less likely to immediately flee an approaching threat. To study the potential effect of mobbing vocalizations on risk assessment, we primed common mynas (Acridotheres tristis) with a series of different stimuli and studied the variation in their subsequent decisions to flee an approaching human by quantifying flight initiation distance (FID). We found that although mynas increased their rate of locomotion after hearing mobbing calls, their subsequent decision to flee was not influenced. We also found that an individual’s propensity to move and look explained some variation in FID. This suggests that while mobbing calls do not influence subsequent decisions to flee, they do affect subsequent behavior.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology for partial support. We thank Andrea S. Griffin for insights about myna vocalizations and for sharing an exemplar. We also thank Dana Williams for her help with data analysis, and Dana and two anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 621 Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1606, USA

    Tom Condon, Abbas Hakim, Antonio B. Zenteno Moran & Daniel T. Blumstein

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  1. Tom Condon
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  2. Abbas Hakim
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  3. Antonio B. Zenteno Moran
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  4. Daniel T. Blumstein
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Correspondence to Daniel T. Blumstein.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Research was conducted under permits issued by the Government of French Polynesia (permit approved on 21 November 2019). Common mynas were studied under University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) IACUC Protocol 2001-147-62B (4 November 2019).

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Condon, T., Hakim, A., Moran, A.B.Z. et al. The effect of mobbing vocalizations on risk perception in common mynas (Acridotheres tristis). J Ethol 39, 89–96 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-020-00677-9

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