Brittany Coppinger

University of Tennessee | UTK · Department of Psychology

Animal signallers are subject to audience effects when they alter communication due to changes in the presence or characteristics of receivers. Studies aimed at understanding audience effects have typically examined effects of conspecific audiences on signaller communication. Less work has focused on heterospecific audiences, which present an impor...

Recent theory in animal communication predicts that a group’s communicative complexity is connected to its social complexity. Social complexity has typically been measured using group size as an index, with larger groups thought to be more complex than smaller groups. However, group size alone does not account for other social differences that coul...

Signalers can vary their vocal behavior, depending on the presence or absence of conspecific group members, and on the composition of the group. Here we asked whether Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) signalers varied their vocal behavior, depending on whether they were in the presence of familiar or unfamiliar flockmates. We sorted 32 Caro...

Correspondence: B. Coppinger, University of Tennessee, Department of Psychology, Walters Life Science Building, Knoxville, TN 37996, U.S.A.