Evolution of communication signals and information during species radiation

Maxime Garcia (), Frédéric Theunissen, Frédéric Sèbe, Julien Clavel, Andrea Ravignani, Thibaut Marin-Cudraz, Jérôme Fuchs and Nicolas Mathevon ()
Additional contact information
Maxime Garcia: University of Lyon/Saint-Etienne
Frédéric Theunissen: University of California
Frédéric Sèbe: University of Lyon/Saint-Etienne
Julien Clavel: Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University
Andrea Ravignani: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Thibaut Marin-Cudraz: University of Lyon/Saint-Etienne
Jérôme Fuchs: Sorbonne Université, EPHE
Nicolas Mathevon: University of Lyon/Saint-Etienne

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Abstract Communicating species identity is a key component of many animal signals. However, whether selection for species recognition systematically increases signal diversity during clade radiation remains debated. Here we show that in woodpecker drumming, a rhythmic signal used during mating and territorial defense, the amount of species identity information encoded remained stable during woodpeckers’ radiation. Acoustic analyses and evolutionary reconstructions show interchange among six main drumming types despite strong phylogenetic contingencies, suggesting evolutionary tinkering of drumming structure within a constrained acoustic space. Playback experiments and quantification of species discriminability demonstrate sufficient signal differentiation to support species recognition in local communities. Finally, we only find character displacement in the rare cases where sympatric species are also closely related. Overall, our results illustrate how historical contingencies and ecological interactions can promote conservatism in signals during a clade radiation without impairing the effectiveness of information transfer relevant to inter-specific discrimination.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18772-3 Abstract (text/html)

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:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18772-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18772-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().