Territorial responses to song components in a suboscine, the vermilion flycatcher
Abstract
Vermilion flycatchers songs are composed of two acoustically different parts: a first part (FP) containing a variable number of introductory elements, and a second part (SP) composed of four elements. Previous work suggests that the FP is important for territorial competition and that it conveys information on threat level. By exposing free-living males to playbacks of complete songs (CS’s), FP’s and SP’s, we evaluated the relative contribution of each song part in males’ territorial responses. Males called in response to all three treatments, suggesting each song component is important for territorial competition. Males’ call response did not differ toward CS’s and FP’s, and toward CS’s and SP’s (although a non-significant tendency was found for SP’s to elicit a weaker response than CS’s), but it was greater toward FP’s than toward SP’s. These results, coupled with previous work, further support the idea that the FP plays a special role during territorial competition and may give information on level of threat. We further discuss our result in terms of mechanistic and functional hypotheses.
Citation
Ríos-Chelén , A A , Crisanto-Téllez , L G , Quiros-Guerrero , E & Rivera-Caceres , K D 2018 , ' Territorial responses to song components in a suboscine, the vermilion flycatcher ' , Behavioural Processes , vol. In press . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.06.012
Publication
Behavioural Processes
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0376-6357Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 Elsevier B. V. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.06.012
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