Should receivers follow multiple signal components? An economic perspective

Tricia L. Rubi and David W. Stephens

Behavioral Ecology, 2016, vol. 27, issue 1, 36-44

Abstract: Animal signals commonly consist of many components. Students of signaling have suggested that these complex, multicomponent signals are beneficial because they are more effective at influencing receiver behavior. This "more is better" view, however, is at odds with economic models, which predict that a single signal component is often sufficient to guide receiver behavior. This study develops a model that asks how receivers should respond to a simple 2-component signal. Our model predicts that receivers will follow the single most reliable component and ignore the second component. We tested this model experimentally using captive blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) as experimental receivers. We presented receivers with artificial signals composed of 2 components and assessed their responses to determine which component(s) they followed. Signals were composed of 2 visual components: a color and a pattern. We tested 3 levels of color reliability and 3 levels of pattern reliability in a factorial combination, resulting in 9 total treatments. We found that subjects followed a single signal component at a high level in every treatment, whereas the second component had a nearly negligible effect. Subjects generally followed the more reliable component, though they showed a bias in favor of color when the reliabilities of color and pattern were similar. We argue that alternative receiver benefits need to be considered to explain the prevalence of complex signals in nature.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arv121 (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:27:y:2016:i:1:p:36-44.

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 ().