Abstract
Animals regularly use social information to make fitness-relevant decisions. Particularly in social interactions, social information can reduce uncertainty about the relative quality of conspecifics, thus optimising decisions on with whom and how to interact. One important resource for individuals living in social environments is the production of information by signalling conspecifics. Recent research has suggested that some species of parrots engage in affiliative contact call matching and that these interactions may be available to conspecific unintended receivers. However, it remains unclear what information third parties may gain from contact call matching and how it can be utilised during flock decisions. Here, using a combined choice and playback experiment, we investigated the flock fusion choices and vocal behaviour of a social parrot species, the orange-fronted conure (Eupsittula canicularis), to a contact call matching interaction between two individuals of different sexes and with different vocal roles. Our results revealed that orange-fronted conures chose to follow vocal leaders more often than vocal followers during fusions. Furthermore, flocks responded with higher call rates and matched the stimulus calls closer when subsequently choosing a vocal leader. Interestingly, orange-fronted conures also showed higher contact call rates and closer matches when choosing males over females. These results suggest that paying attention to conspecific contact call interactions can provide individuals with social information that can be utilised during fission and fusion events, significantly influencing the social dynamics of orange-fronted conures.
Highlights
We aimed to reduce this knowledge gap by systematically testing for an effect of vocal behaviour during contact call matching on third party flock decisions in a social parrot, the orange-fronted conure (Eupsittula canicularis)
When disregarding if focal flocks chose stimulus individuals, we found an overall interaction between the role and sex of stimulus individuals on the spectrographic cross-correlation (SPCC) stimulus-response similarity during male-female trials (Table 4, Fig 7), suggesting that focal flocks showed considerable variation in how well they matched stimulus calls from leaders and followers of both sexes
We simulated a contact call interaction between two individuals in which a follower matched a leader. When playing these interactions to wild flocks of orange-fronted conures, focal flocks showed differentiated responses towards leaders and followers, suggesting that they extracted sequential information about the vocal pattern embedded in the interaction
Summary
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Animals continuously seek information about their environment to reduce uncertainty and optimise decision-making [1,2,3]. As opposed to information acquired from direct interaction with the environment (personal information), cues and signals from other individuals (social information) can be obtained at reduced costs and provide additional information that can lead to more accurate estimates of environmental parameters [1, 4, 5].
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