Do Arabian babblers play mixed strategies in a “volunteer’s dilemma”?

Aviad Heifetz, Ruth Heller and Roni Ostreiher

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2021, vol. 91, issue C

Abstract: When group-living Arabian babbler songbirds hear a sentinel alarm call that indicates a raptor approach, they should instantaneously choose whether to flee to shelter, or rather to expose themselves while calling towards the raptor to communicate to it its detection. If enough group members thus signal to the raptor their vigilance, the raptor is likely to be dissuaded from attacking the group. Groupmates thus engage in a variant of the “volunteer’s dilemma” game (Diekmann, 1985), whose symmetric equilibrium is in mixed strategies.

Keywords: Alarm call; Mixed strategy; Volunteer’s dilemma; Arabian babbler (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221480432100001X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:soceco:v:91:y:2021:i:c:s221480432100001x

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101661

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().