Production of multimodal signals to assert social dominance in white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari)

Raimundo N Alencar, Sérgio L G Nogueira-Filho and Selene S C Nogueira

PLOS ONE, 2023, vol. 18, issue 2, 1-24

Abstract: In this study we aimed to examine whether the ‘redundancy’ (a backup function to ensure the signal transmission) or ‘multiple messages’ (sensory communication system in combination) hypothesis would explain the function of multimodal communication of white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari–WLPs). We also aimed to assess the individual factors (the social rank and sex of the sender) influencing the production of, and responses to unimodal and multimodal signals. We determined the social rank of 21 WLPs living in two captive groups and quantified the production of unimodal and multimodal signals when displaying threatening and submissive behaviors. WLPs most often produce multimodal signals independent of a previous unimodal signal failure, which suggests that they were adding more information, such as the sender’s size, rather than merely increasing efficacy by engaging a different receiver’s sensory channel. There was no effect of the sender’s sex in the production of, and responses to, multimodal signals. However, the higher the sender’s social rank, the greater the production of multimodal signals when WLPs were displaying threatening behaviors; whereas the lower the sender’s social rank, the greater the production of multimodal signals when displaying submission behaviors. Multimodal signals elicited more non-aggressive responses than did the unimodal signals when displaying a threat. Moreover, the higher the sender’s social rank, the greater the occurrence of non-aggressive responses to multimodal signals when displaying a threat; whereas the opposite occurred when displaying submission. Our findings support the ‘multiple messages’ hypothesis to explain the function of multimodal signaling during agonistic interactions in WLPs. Additionally, both the production of, and responses to, multimodal signals are related to the sender’s social rank. These results allow us to suggest that the production of multimodal signals may have a key role in mitigating conflict and thus promoting group cohesion among white-lipped peccaries.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0280728 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 80728&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0280728

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280728

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().