Alarm Calls as Costly Signals of Anti-Predator Vigilance: The Watchful Babbler Game

Carl Bergstrom () and Michael Lachmann

Working Papers from Santa Fe Institute

Abstract: Alarm-calling behavior is common in many species that suffer from predation. While kin selection or reciprocal altruism are typically invoked to explain such a behaviour, several authors have conjectured that some alarm calls may instead be costly signals sent by prey to inform approaching predators that they have been detected. We develop a general game-theoretic model -- the Watchful Babbler game -- in which prey signal awareness to predators. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for alarm calls to function as honest signals. We show that signals can honestly reveal prey awareness if (1) the prey's sense of predation risk accurately reflects the probability that the predator is present, and (2) greater awareness of the predator allows the prey a great chance of escape. When honest signalling is possible, the model predicts that prey will be more willing to signal when predators are common that when predators are rare, and that greater pursuit costs to the predator will allow cheaper signals by the prey.

Keywords: Costly signalling; alarm calls; predator prey interaction. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ind
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:wop:safiwp:00-02-009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Santa Fe Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().