On heterospecifc learning in birds – comments on Samplonius and Forsman et al

Abstract

In several papers, it has been argued that two migratory species, the pied and the collared flycatcher, Ficedula hypoleuca and F. albicollis, take clutch size of a resident bird, the great tit Parus major, into account when deciding which of two adjacent nest boxes to use for their own breeding attempt (see Forsman et al. 2017). We termed this the interspecific cue hypothesis (the ICH; Slagsvold and Wiebe 2017) and argued that some of its basic assumptions have never been critically examined. Samplonius (2017) and Forsman et al. (2017) criticize our paper and argue that the ICH is the most plausible explanation but here we conclude that the new data they provide on the behaviour of the pied flycatcher (Forsman et al. 2017) are, in fact, inconsistent with the most critical assumption of the ICH. Therefore, the hypothesis should be rejected. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.