RUI/Collaborative Research: The Relative Importance of Alarm and Safety Communication Networks in an Amazonian Bird Community

It has long been known that animals obtain information about threats from other species, but there is a growing awareness that they also may obtain information about safety from other species. Some Amazonian birds live and forage together in close associations and are an ideal system to quantify the relative importance of alarm and safety signaling.

By capitalizing on ecological gradients created by logging and development, which have reduced the number of birds living together, this project will be among the first to compare and contrast interspecific threat and safety networks and while doing so determine how robust they are to anthropogenic challenges. These insights are foundationally important to manage populations in an era of human modified environmental changes, and these results will identify key behavioral mechanisms that may ultimately be drivers for species interactions in diverse biological communities.

While doing so, this project will train students at the undergraduate and graduate level and will generate a local academic bridge for students from diverse backgrounds at California State University Long Beach, a primarily undergraduate institution, and the University of California at Los Angeles. Additionally, this project will generate inquiry-based lesson plans for public schools in two California school districts as part of an ongoing outreach effort stemming from research activities in Peru and present students with a broader representation of diverse people as role models in science and to demystify the scientific process.

There is a growing awareness that animals often benefit from the public information contained in alarm signals produced by members of other species. While much research has focused on mixed-species groups of related or similar species, some recent examples illustrate how signals are also used between quite distinct taxonomic groups. Despite the emphasis on eavesdropping on alarm signals, animals also acquire information about safety by eavesdropping on the non-threat-related sounds produced by other species.

Understanding the interplay between alarm signals and cues of safety within the public information landscape is essential to understand the role of communication in shaping species interactions within groups and how this influences the larger community. This project will study the roles of mixed-species flocks of Amazonian birds in community-wide alarm and safety eavesdropping networks along a gradient of forest degradation.

Results will identify the relative importance of these networks and how robust these systems are to the loss of individual species. These insights are foundationally important to predict how biological communities may change across human modified environmental changes, and these results will identify key behavioral mechanisms that may ultimately be drivers for species interactions in diverse biological communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.