Abstract
The Paridae family (chickadees, tits and titmice) is an interesting avian group in that species vary in important aspects of their social structure and many species have large and complex vocal repertoires. For this reason, parids represent an important set of species for testing the social complexity hypothesis for vocal communication—the notion that as groups increase in social complexity, there is a need for increased vocal complexity. Here, we describe the hypothesis and some of the early evidence that supported the hypothesis. Next, we review literature on social complexity and on vocal complexity in parids, and describe some of the studies that have made explicit tests of the social complexity hypothesis in one parid—Carolina chickadees, Poecile carolinensis. We conclude with a discussion, primarily from a parid perspective, of the benefits and costs of grouping and of physiological factors that might mediate the relationship between social complexity and changes in signalling behaviour.
Highlights
The social experience of an individual during ontogeny can profoundly influence vocal signals that the individual uses in its interactions with others [1,2]
In the first experimental test of whether social complexity might affect vocal complexity, Freeberg [46] manipulated group size in Carolina chickadees in captive settings, and found that birds placed into larger groups ended up using chicka-dee calls with greater diversity of note-type usage compared with birds placed into smaller groups
BENEFITS AND COSTS IN PARID SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE SOCIAL COMPLEXITY HYPOTHESIS In §§2 and 3, we discussed research on the question of how variation in social complexity might relate to variation in vocal complexity, with a focus on parid species
Summary
The social experience of an individual during ontogeny can profoundly influence vocal signals that the individual uses in its interactions with others [1,2]. The social complexity hypothesis [4] argues that groups with greater social complexity will possess greater complexity in their. The social complexity hypothesis would predict that species forming larger flocks should have a greater diversity of vocalizations compared with species forming smaller flocks. In more ‘egalitarian’ species should drive greater vocal complexity compared with the lower diversity of social connections in more ‘despotic’ species, according to the social complexity hypothesis. We conclude by linking notions of benefits and costs of social grouping (§4c) to questions regarding vocal signalling complexity (§4d), with the aim of generating ideas for future tests of the social complexity hypothesis
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