No cultural transmission of species recognition between parents and offspring in free-living great tits and blue tits |
| |
Authors: | Bo Terning Hansen Lars Erik Johannessen Tore Slagsvold |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Biology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1050, Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway;(2) Present address: Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1172, Blindern, 0318 Oslo, Norway |
| |
Abstract: | Imprinting plays a key role in the development of species recognition, with young imprinting upon the morphological characters
of their parents. However, the potential role that cultural transmission might play in species recognition remains largely
uninvestigated. Great tits (Parus major) and blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) do not normally perceive each other as sexual competitors or potential partners. However, after reciprocal interspecific
cross-fostering, both species may perceive individuals of the foster species as potential rivals or mates. Although the experience
of being raised by heterospecifics clearly has affected the species recognition of cross-fostered birds, some of them breed
naturally with conspecifics. The offspring of such cross-fostered birds (OCF) are hence raised by parents that look like ordinary
conspecifics but display deviant species recognition as compared to controls in terms of aggressive response towards rivals.
Comparing the aggressive behavior of OCF, cross-fostered birds and controls towards territorial intruders may thus help tease
apart the influence of morphological vs behavioral cues of parents in the development of offspring species recognition. To
this end, we compared birds from all three treatments with respect to their aggressive response to territorial intruders of
both species during the breeding season. OCF and controls did not differ in their pattern of response towards heterospecific
and conspecific stimuli. Compared to cross-fostered birds, OCF and controls showed less aggression towards heterospecific
intruders, while the response towards conspecific intruders did not differ between treatments. These results demonstrate that
both tit species imprint on the morphological characters of their parents, but that parental behavior is not important for
the development of species recognition in terms of aggressive response towards territorial intruders. |
| |
Keywords: | Sexual imprinting Learning Cross-fostering Animal culture Communicative culture |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|