Social information use about novel aposematic prey depends on the intensity of the observed cue

Clelia Mulà, Rose Thorogood and Liisa Hämäläinen

Behavioral Ecology, 2022, vol. 33, issue 4, 825-832

Abstract: Animals gather social information by observing the behavior of others, but how the intensity of observed cues influences decision-making is rarely investigated. This is crucial for understanding how social information influences ecological and evolutionary dynamics. For example, observing a predator’s distaste of unpalatable prey can reduce predation by naïve birds, and help explain the evolution and maintenance of aposematic warning signals. However, previous studies have only used demonstrators that responded vigorously, showing intense beak-wiping after tasting prey. Therefore, here we conducted an experiment with blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) informed by variation in predator responses. First, we found that the response to unpalatable food varies greatly, with only few individuals performing intensive beak-wiping. We then tested how the intensity of beak-wiping influences observers’ foraging choices using video-playback of a conspecific tasting a novel conspicuous prey item. Observers were provided social information from 1) no distaste response, 2) a weak distaste response, or 3) a strong distaste response, and were then allowed to forage on evolutionarily novel (artificial) prey. Consistent with previous studies, we found that birds consumed fewer aposematic prey after seeing a strong distaste response, however, a weak response did not influence foraging choices. Our results suggest that while beak-wiping is a salient cue, its information content may vary with cue intensity. Furthermore, the number of potential demonstrators in the predator population might be lower than previously thought, although determining how this influences social transmission of avoidance in the wild will require uncovering the effects of intermediate cue salience.

Keywords: aposematism; avoidance learning; blue tit; chemical defense; distaste; social information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arac046 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:33:y:2022:i:4:p:825-832.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().