Geographic variation in marmots’ alarm calls causes different responses

Geographic variation in acoustic signals has been investigated for five decades to better understand the evolution of communication. When receivers are able to discriminate among signals and to react accordingly, geographic variation can have major impacts on the ability of conspecifics to communica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral ecology and sociobiology 2020-08, Vol.74 (8), p.1-13, Article 97
Main Authors: Lengagne, Thierry, Ferrandiz-Rovira, Mariona, Superbie, Clara, Figueroa, Irene, Bichet, Coraline, Claramunt-Lopez, Bernat, Cohas, Aurélie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alarm systems
Animal behavior
Animal Ecology
Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity and Ecology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Communication
Conspecifics
Dialects
Environmental Sciences
Evolution
Familiarity
Genetic distance
Geographical variations
Intelligibility
Life Sciences
Marmota
Natural selection
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Playback
Populations
Predation
Random processes
Receivers
Rodents
Survival
Zoology
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Summary:Geographic variation in acoustic signals has been investigated for five decades to better understand the evolution of communication. When receivers are able to discriminate among signals and to react accordingly, geographic variation can have major impacts on the ability of conspecifics to communicate. Surprisingly, geographic variation in alarm calls and its consequences for the communication process have been so far neglected despite their crucial role on individual survival. Working with four wild populations of Alpine marmots (Marmota marmota), we found differences in the acoustic structure of their alarm calls. These differences cannot be explained by geographic or genetic distances but more likely by other mechanisms including random processes. Moreover, playback experiments provided evidence that receivers discriminate between alarm calls from their own versus other populations, with responses at lower intensity when the alarm calls played back originated from their own population. Research on the mechanistic causes of geographic variation and on the relationship between alarm call variation, familiarity, and intelligibility of signal and behavioral responses is now required to better understand how predation pressure, and more widely natural selection, could drive the evolution of communication.
ISSN:0340-5443
1432-0762
DOI:10.1007/s00265-020-02858-5