Unlearned adaptive responses to heterospecific referential alarm calls in two bird species from separate evolutionary lineages

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 20287
• Main Authors: Ha, Jungmoon, Lee, Keesan, Yang, Eunjeong, Kim, Woojoo, Song, Hokyung, Hwang, Injae, Lee-Cruz, Larisa, Park, Jinseok, Song, Jihyeon, Park, Chan-ryul, Lee, Wooshin, Jablonski, Piotr, Lee, Sang-im
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20-11-2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/158/856; 631/181; Acoustics; Alarm behavior; Animals; Behavior; Biological Evolution; Birds; Environmental Sciences; Evolution; Habitats; Humanities and Social Sciences; Juveniles; Learning; multidisciplinary; Paridae; Passeriformes; Playback; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Snakes; Species; Vocalization, Animal - physiology
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-47052-5

The interspecific responses to alarm signals may be based on unlearned mechanisms but research is often constrained by the difficulties in differentiating between unlearned and learned responses in natural situations. In a field study of two Paridae species,
Parus minor
and
Sittiparus varius
, who originated from a common ancestor 8 million years ago, we found a considerable degree of between-species overlap in acoustic properties of referential snake-alarm calls. Playback of these calls triggered unlearned adaptive fledging behavior in conspecific and heterospecific naive nestlings, suggesting a between-species overlap in the hypothetical unlearned neural templates involved in nestlings’ reactions to alarm calls in both species. This suggests that similar calls and similar unlearned sensitivity might have been present in the common ancestor of the two species, and possibly in the ancestor of the whole family Paridae that originated 10–15 million years ago in Asian regions rich in snakes.