Samantha J. Doohan’s research while affiliated with University of New England and other places

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Publications (2)


Using referential alarm signals to remotely quantify ‘landscapes of fear’ in fragmented woodland
  • Article

December 2021

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44 Reads

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1 Citation

Bioacoustics

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Samantha J. Doohan

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Kyia J. Eveleigh

Land-use changes have greatly impacted biodiversity and led to new conservation challenges, including greater predation pressure, although this can be difficult to quantify. Here we directly monitor predator encounters in fragmented woodlands by using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) and a semi-automated assessment protocol to detect functionally referential alarm vocalisations of the noisy miner Manorina melanocephala. We demonstrate that measuring changes in perceived predation pressure, the so-called ‘landscape of fear’, in a prey species across temporal (dawn, midday, dusk across multiple seasons) and spatial scales (small/large fragments and edge/centre locations within fragments) is achievable. Vocalisations linked with ground predator presence were rarer during midday recordings, but more commonly detected from the edge rather than centre of smaller fragments. While the probability of detecting aerial alarm calls directed at flying raptors also increased in edge habitat, aerial alarm detections declined from a dawn peak to a minimum during dusk recordings. These patterns did not simply reflect noisy miner occupancy or different sections of monitored patches, but highlighted higher perceived predation risk along edges, particularly for small patches, demonstrating the nuanced insights that PAM can offer when quantifying animal behaviour.


Alarm calls of a cooperative bird are referential and elicit context-specific antipredator behavior

May 2017

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82 Reads

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27 Citations

Behavioral Ecology

Although functionally referential signals have been extensively studied, largely in mammals (e.g., nonhuman primates, see Cheney and Seyfarth (1988); mongooses, see Manser et al. (2002); and other ground-dwelling species, see Blumstein and Armitage (1997), other social taxa such as birds would similarly benefit from the use of referential signals. We therefore investigated alarm calling in the cooperative noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala), a species that has been anecdotally recorded producing aerial alarms to flying predators and empirically recorded generating terrestrial alarms to ground-based threats. For these signals to be truly referential however, they must meet 3 criteria. First, calls must be structurally distinct, a requirement that these 2 call types meet. Second, calls must be stimulus-specific and reliably associated with a given stimulus. We tested this on free-living birds by exposing them to a simulated aerial predator that was either in flight or subsequently perched and thus presented one of the first studies on functionally referential alarm systems where both aerial and terrestrial alarm calls have been tested. Miners only produced aerial alarms while the stimulus was in flight, switching to terrestrial alarms once it landed. Third, referential signals must elicit different escape responses that are "appropriate" to the associated threat. Under field conditions, aerial alarm playback alone provoked an almost instantaneous response of fleeing to vegetation cover, whereas terrestrial alarm playback elicited significantly slower responses by receivers and an increase in scanning behavior. During laboratory experiments, aerial alarms stimulated birds to spend more time looking upwards, whereas terrestrial alarm calls stimulated individuals to scan perpendicularly, as expected if these stimuli provided information on likely predator location. Although other avian taxa have been shown to use referential alarm signals, this system provides novel evidence of referential calls based on the behavior rather than the type of predator, providing a highly adaptive means of communicating risk to other members of the social group in this cooperative species. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved.

Citations (1)


... Many animals produce antipredator or alarm vocalizations when faced with predator encounters or other stressful situations, and some species adjust these vocalizations in response to perceived threat level (Eddington et al., 2024;Farrow et al., 2017;Griesser, 2008). Graded alarm call systems are antipredator responses that use functionally referential calls, which are calls that vary depending on the type of external stimulus. ...

Reference:

The effect of localized disturbance on the acoustic behavior of the common tern (Sterna hirundo)
Alarm calls of a cooperative bird are referential and elicit context-specific antipredator behavior
  • Citing Article
  • May 2017

Behavioral Ecology