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20 results for “honest signal”
Data from: Scented nectar and the challenge of measuring honest signals in pollination
<p>1. Nectar scents are thought to function as honest signals of reward used by pollinators, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested. 2. Using <i>Penstemon digitalis</i>, we examined honest signalling of the nectar volatile (S)-(+)-linalool and pollinator responses to linalool in both field and laboratory settings. Because our previous work showed that linalool emission was associated with higher female fitness and that nectar is scented with linalool, we hypothesized that linalool was an honest signal of nectar reward. To assess honesty, we measured linalool-nectar associations including nectar volume, sugar amount, concentration, and production rate for inflorescences and flowers in several populations. We also assessed whether Bombus impatiens, the main pollinator of P. digitalis at our sites, can use linalool as a foraging signal. We supplemented real or artificial flowers in the field and lab with varying linalool-nectar combinations to measure pollinator behavioural responses. 3. We found that an inflorescence's linalool emissions could be used to predict nectar rewards in P. digitalis, but this was driven by indirect associations with display size rather than directly advertising more profitable flowers. For flowers within inflorescences there was also no evidence for an association between signal and reward. Field tests of bumblebee behaviour were inconclusive. However, in laboratory assays bumblebees generally used variation in linalool emissions to choose more profitable flowers, demonstrating they can detect differences in linalool emitted by P. digitalis and associate them with reward profitability. These results suggest experiments that decouple display size, scent and reward are necessary to assess whether (and when) bees prefer higher linalool emissions. Bees preferred nectars with lower linalool concentrations when linalool flavoured the nectar solution, suggesting potential for conflicting pressures on scent emission in the field. 4. Synthesis: Our results highlight the challenges of assessing function for traits important to fitness and suggest that the perception of floral signalling honesty may depend on whether pollinators use inflorescences or flowers within inflorescences when making foraging decisions. We conclude that future research on honest signalling in flowering plants, as well as its connection to phenotypic selection, should explicitly consider among- and within-inflorescence honesty, in theoretical and experimental contexts.</p>
Data from: Are signals of aggressive intent less honest in urban habitats?
How anthropogenic change affects animal social behavior, including communication is an important question. Urban noise often drives shifts in acoustic properties of signals but the consequences of noise for the honesty of signals – i.e. how well they predict signaler behavior – is unclear. Here we examine whether honesty of aggressive signaling is compromised in male urban song sparrows (Melospiza melodia). Song sparrows have two honest close-range signals: the low amplitude soft songs (an acoustic signal) and wing waves (a visual signal) but whether the honesty of these signals is affected by urbanization has not been examined. If soft songs are less effective in urban noise, we predict that they should predict attacks less reliably in urban habitats compared to rural habitats. We confirmed earlier findings that urban birds were more aggressive than rural birds and found that acoustic noise was higher in urban habitats. Urban birds still sang more soft songs than rural birds. High rates of soft songs and low rates of loud songs predicted attacks in both habitats. Thus, while urbanization has a significant effect on aggressive behaviors, it might have a limited effect on the overall honesty of aggressive signals in song sparrows. We also found evidence for a multimodal shift: urban birds tended to give proportionally more wing waves than soft songs than rural birds, although whether that shift is due to noise-dependent plasticity is unclear. These findings encourage further experimental study of the specific variables that are responsible for behavioral change due to urbanization.
Data from: Are signals of aggressive intent less honest in urban habitats?
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Honest signalling in predator-prey interactions: testing the resource allocation hypothesis
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Data from: Scented nectar and the challenge of measuring honest signals in pollination
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Visual contagion in prey defense signals can enhance honest defense
<p>The co-evolutionary arms race between predators and their prey has led to complex signaling, especially in groups that benefit from the social transmission of alarm signals. In particular, pursuit deterrence signals can allow individuals and groups to indicate, at relatively low cost, that a predator’s further approach is futile. Pursuit deterrence signals are usually more effective if amplified by becoming contagious and rapidly spreading among prey without requiring individual prey to confirm predator presence. However, this can also lead to runaway false signaling. We provide the first evidence of a contagious pursuit deterrence signal in social insects. The Asian honey bee, <em>Apis cerana</em>, performs an I See You (ISY) signal that deters attacking hornets. We show that these signals also attract guard bees to enhance defensive signaling and that the visual movements of appropriate stimuli alone (hornets and ISY signaling bees, but not harmless butterflies) provide sufficient stimuli. Olfaction and other potential cues are not necessary. The ISY signal is visually contagious and is buffered from runaway false signalsbecause it is specifically triggered and, likely, by selection for honesty within the highly cooperative bee colony. These results expand our understanding of contagious signals and how they can be honestly maintained in highly cooperative collectives.</p>
Do visual traits honestly signal floral rewards at community level?
<p>1. The high variability observed in floral traits has been interpreted as resulting from the adaptation of plants to pollinators, as the latter present innate preferences for specific floral traits and impose selection over them. However, some pollinators such as bees can learn to associate floral signals with rewards, thus increasing floral constancy on more rewarding flowers. The integration of all these rewards and cues is markedly important at community level, where co-flowering species compete for pollinators. 2. In order to verify the honesty of the above mentioned signals, we examined the association between floral visual signals (size, colour, symmetry and floral display) and rewards (pollen and nectar) for 98 species in a Mediterranean community. The associations between floral traits were analysed considering the phylogenetic relationship between the different species. 3. Flower colour, size, pollen volume, or amount of sucrose exhibited no phylogenetic signal, which suggests an adaptive evolution in response to different conditions in the pollinator community. Flower size was seen to constitute the most honest signal for pollinators, as this was significantly associated with quantities of pollen and nectar. In contrast, nectar concentration was observed to be positively associated with chromatic contrast. We detected no relationship between flower shape and rewards, on the one hand, or between flower display and rewards, on the other. 4. Our study unequivocally demonstrates the correlation between rewards and the visual signals perceived by bees, the most effective pollinators in the Mediterranean Basin. In the community studied, bees employed flower size at longer distances and chromatic contrast at shorter distances to predict rewards. The limited number of studies existing in this sense indicates that this kind of association appears to be community specific.</p>
Data from: Costs and constraints conspire to produce honest signalling: insights from an ant queen pheromone
Signal costs and evolutionary constraints have both been proposed as ultimate explanations for the ubiquity of honest signalling, but the interface between these two factors is unclear. Here, I propose a pluralistic interpretation, and use game theory to demonstrate that evolutionary constraints determine whether signals evolve to be costly or cheap. Specifically, when the costs or benefits of signalling are strongly influenced by the sender's quality, low-cost signals evolve. The model reaffirms that cheap and costly signals can both be honest, and predicts that expensive signals should have more positive allometric slopes than cheap ones. The new framework is applied to an experimental study of an ant queen pheromone that honestly signals fecundity. Juvenile hormone was found to have opposing, dose-dependent effects on pheromone production and fecundity and was fatal at high doses, indicating that endocrine-mediated trade-offs preclude dishonesty. Several lines of evidence suggest that the realised cost of pheromone production may be non-trivial, and the antagonistic effects of juvenile hormone indicate the presence of significant evolutionary constraints. I conclude that the honesty of queen pheromones and other signals is likely enforced by both the cost of dishonesty and a suite of evolutionary constraints.
Data from: Bacteria and the evolution of honest signals. The case of ornamental throat feathers in spotless starlings
1.Mechanisms guaranteeing reliability of messages are essential in understanding the underlying information and evolution of signals. Microorganisms may degrade signalling traits and therefore, influence the transmitted information and evolution of these characters. The role of microorganisms in animal signalling has, however, rarely been investigated. 2.Here, we explore a possible role for feather-degrading bacteria driving the design of ornamental throat feathers in male spotless starlings (Sturnus unicolor). We estimated length, bacterial load, degradation status, and susceptibility to degradation by keratinolytic bacteria in those feathers, compared to non-ornamental adjacent feathers in males, as well as to throat feathers in females. In addition, the volume of the uropygial gland and its secretion was measured, and the secretion extracted. We also experimentally evaluated the capacity of each secretion to inhibit growth of a keratinolytic bacterium. 3.The apical part of male ornamental throat feathers harboured more bacteria and degraded more quickly than the basal part; these patterns were not detected in female throat feathers or in non-ornamental male feathers. Moreover, degradation status of male and female throat feathers did not differ, but was positively associated with feather bacterial density. Finally, the size of the uropygial gland in both males and females predicted volume and the inhibitory capacity of secretion against feather-degrading bacteria. Only in males was uropygial gland size negatively associated with the level of feather degradation. 4.All results indicate differential susceptibility of different parts of throat feathers to keratinolytic bacterial attack, which supports the possibility that throat feathers in starlings reflect individual ability to combat feather-degrading bacteria honestly. This is further supported by the relationship detected between antimicrobial properties of uropygial secretion and the level of feather degradation. 5.Our results suggest that selection pressures exerted by feather-degrading bacteria on hosts may promote evolution of particular morphologies of secondary sexual traits with different susceptibility to bacterial degradation that reliably inform of their bacterial load. Those results will help to understand the evolution of ornamental signals.
Data from: Poison frog colors are honest signals of toxicity, particularly for bird predators
Antipredator defenses and warning signals typically evolve in concert. However, the extensive variation across taxa in both these components of predator deterrence, and the relationship between them, are poorly understood. Here we test whether there is a predictive relationship between visual conspicuousness and toxicity levels across 10 populations of the color polymorphic strawberry poison frog, Dendrobates pumilio. Using a mouse-based toxicity assay, we find extreme variation in toxicity between frog populations. This variation is significantly positively correlated with frog coloration brightness, a viewer-independent measure of visual conspicuousness (i.e. total reflectance flux). We also examine conspicuousness from the view of three potential predator taxa, as well as conspecific frogs, using taxon-specific visual detection models and three natural background substrates. We find very strong positive relationships between frog toxicity and conspicuousness for bird-specific perceptual models. Weaker but still positive correlations are found for crab and D. pumilio conspecific visual perception, while frog coloration as viewed by snakes is not related to toxicity. These results suggest that poison frog colors can be honest signals of prey unpalatability to predators, and that birds in particular may exert selection on aposematic signal design.
Honest signalling of cooperative intentions
<p>Trust can transform conflicting interests into cooperation. But how can individuals know when to trust others? Here, I develop the theory that reputation building may signal cooperative intent, or 'trustworthiness'. I model a simple representation of this theory in which individuals (1) optionally invest in a reputation by performing costly helpful behaviour ('signalling'); (2) optionally use others' reputations when choosing a partner; and (3) optionally cooperate with that partner. In evolutionary simulations, high levels of reputation building; of choosing partners based on reputation; and of cooperation within partnerships emerged. Costly helping behaviour evolved into an honest signal of trustworthiness when it was adaptive for cooperators, relative to defectors, to invest in the long-term benefits of a reputation for helping. I show using game theory that this occurs when cooperators gain larger marginal benefits from investing in signalling than do defectors. This happens without the usual costly signalling assumption that individuals are of two 'types' which differ in quality. Signalling of trustworthiness may help explain phenomena such as philanthropy, pro-sociality, collective action, punishment, and advertising in humans and may be particularly applicable to courtship in other animals.</p>
Data from: Costs and constraints conspire to produce honest signalling: insights from an ant queen pheromone
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Honest signalling of cooperative intentions
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Data from: Bacteria and the evolution of honest signals. The case of ornamental throat feathers in spotless starlings
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Do visual traits honestly signal floral rewards at community level?
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Data from: Poison frog colors are honest signals of toxicity, particularly for bird predators
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Data from: A sensory bias overrides learned preferences of bumblebees for honest signals in Mimulus guttatus
<p class="CxSpFirst">Insect pollinators readily learn olfactory cues, and this is expected to select for "honest signals" that provide reliable information about floral rewards. However, plants might alternatively produce signals that exploit pollinators' sensory biases, thereby relaxing selection for signal honesty. We examined the innate and learned preferences of <i>Bombus impatiens</i> for <i>Mimulus guttatus</i> floral scent phenotypes corresponding to different levels of pollen rewards in the presence and absence of the innately attractive floral volatile compound β-trans-bergamotene. Bees learned to prefer honest signals after foraging on live <i>M. guttatus</i> flowers, but only exhibited this preference when presented floral scent phenotypes that did not include β-trans-bergamotene. Our results suggest that a sensory bias for β-trans-bergamotene overrides the ability of <i>B. impatiens</i> to use honest signals when foraging on <i>M. guttatus</i>. This may represent a deceptive pollination strategy that allows plants to minimize investment in costly rewards without incurring reduced rates of pollinator visitation.</p>
Data from: Conflict of interest and signal interference lead to the breakdown of honest signalling
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Data from: Evolution of short tails and breakdown of honest signaling system during a severe winter in the Pacific swallow Hirundo tahitica
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Data from: A sensory bias overrides learned preferences of bumblebees for honest signals in Mimulus guttatus
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