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journal article Alarm Calls of Belding's Ground Squirrels to Aerial Predators: Nepotism or Self-Preservation?Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Vol. 17, No. 4 (1985) , pp. 313-323 (11 pages) Published By: Springer https://www.jstor.org/stable/4599840 Read and download Log in through your school or library Abstract Belding's ground squirrels (Spermophilus beldingi) give acoustically distinct alarm calls to aerial and terrestrial predators. The animals typically give multiple-note trills to predatory mammals, and single-note whistles to flying hawks. During a 9-year study of free-living S. beldingi at Tioga Pass, California, the adaptive significance of the whistle call was investigated. Data were gathered on 664 ground squirrel-hawk interactions, most of which were induced by flying trained raptors over individually marked study animals of known sex and age. The sight of a flying hawk and the sound of whistles stimulated widespread calling and running to shelter by the ground squirrels (Fig. 1). Wild raptors were rarely successful at capturing the rodents once a whistle had been given, and fewer callers than noncallers were killed (Table 1). Individuals of both sexes and all ages whistled equally often (Fig. 4), and females' tendencies to whistle were not affected by the presence of relatives, including offspring (Fig. 5). The most frequent callers were animals in exposed positions: far from cover and close to the predatory bird (Table 2). Taken together the data suggest that unlike trills, which increase vulnerability to terrestrial predators (Table 1) and function to warn relatives, whistles directly benefit callers by increasing their chances of escaping from hawks. Journal Information Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology publishes reviews, original contributions and commentaries dealing with quantitative empirical and theoretical studies in the analysis of animal behavior on the level of the individual, population and community. A new section, "Methods", considers submissions dealing with statistical procedures and their problems, as well as with problems related to measurement techniques. Special emphasis is placed on the proximate mechanisms, ultimate functions and evolution of ecological adaptations of behavior. Among aspects of particular interest are intraspecific behavioral interactions, with special focus on social behavior; interspecific behavioral mechanisms including competition and resource partitioning, mutualism, predator-prey interactions and parasitism; behavioral ecophysiology; orientation in space and time; and relevant evolutionary and functional theory. Publisher Information Springer is one of the leading international scientific publishing companies, publishing over 1,200 journals and more than 3,000 new books annually, covering a wide range of subjects including biomedicine and the life sciences, clinical medicine, physics, engineering, mathematics, computer sciences, and economics. Rights & Usage This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. |
Which of the following is not a hypothesis offered to explain alarm calling in ground squirrels?
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