ArticleCommunications biology2020
Heterospecific eavesdropping on an anti-parasitic referential alarm call.
Article in Communications biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Acoustic overtones improve the discrimination of conspecific female calls by male common cuckoos from similar heterospecific calls.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Egg shape and color mediate acceptance thresholds in diverse avian host species with different rates of antiparasitic egg rejection.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Colonial breeding impacts potentially fitness-relevant cognitive processes in barn swallows.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Functional neurogenomic responses to acoustic threats, including a heterospecific referential alarm call and its referent, in the auditory forebrain of red-winged blackbirds.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Heterospecific eavesdropping on disturbance cues of a treefrog.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Red-winged blackbirds nesting nearer to yellow warbler and conspecific nests experience less brood parasitism.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Anti-Predation Responses to Conspecific versus Heterospecific Alarm Calls by the Nestlings of Two Sympatric Birds.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- The overlooked complexity of avian brood parasite-host relationships.Ecology letters · 2022Review
- Referential alarm calling elicits future vigilance in a host of an avian brood parasite.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Quintuple parasitism of a great reed warbler nest by common cuckoos.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Inter-Individual Variation in Anti-Parasitic Egg Rejection Behavior: A Test of the Maternal Investment Hypothesis.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Referential alarm calls occur across taxa to warn of specific predator types. However, referential calls may also denote other types of dangers. Yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia) produce "seet" calls specifically to warn conspecifics of obligate brood parasitic brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater), which lay their eggs in the warblers' and other species' nests. Sympatric hosts of cowbirds that do not have referential alarm calls may eavesdrop on the yellow warbler's seet call as a warning system for brood parasites. Using playback presentations, we found that red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) eavesdrop on seet calls of yellow warblers, and respond as much to seet calls as to cowbird chatters and predator calls. Red-winged blackbirds appear to eavesdrop on seets as warning system to boost frontline defenses on their territories, although they do not seem to perceive the warblers' seets as a cue for parasitism per se, but rather for general danger to the nest.
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Registered trials
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