This readme.txt file was generated on 2024-10-17


GENERAL INFORMATION

Title of Dataset : Investigation of the function of chaffinch rain-calls


Date of data collection : March 2023-June 2024


Summary of the project : 
The chaffinch *Fringilla coelebs* is a very common passerine in Europe. One of the chaffinche's vocalisations, called "rain-call", is very common and conspicuous, however, it's function is still not well understood. Three hypotheses have been postulated as to what chaffinches rain-call are for: (1) the rain-call could be used in territorial context by males as a substitute for the song when the bird is in stressful conditions, (2) the rain-call is an alarm call, and (3) the rain-call is a mate-directed signal for communication within the pair. We tested these three hypotheses using two playbacks and behavioural observations in the wild. 
- In the first playback, we broadcasted rain-calls, chaffinch songs and the song of balckbirds as a control. We measured if chaffinch males reacted to rain-calls similarely to a simulated territorial intrusion. 
- In the second playback, we simulated the presence of predators (hawk and crows, compared to a balckbird's song as a control) and observed  if chaffinches started rain-calling. 
- Third, we closely followed five chaffinch males in the field, and took good note of the social and environemental context of rain-calling behaviour. 
We find that chaffinches did not react to rain-calls with the same agresive response than to territorial intrusion, wich does not support the hypothesis of a song substitute. We found that chaffinches started rain-calling consistently when we broadcasted predator calls, as well as when we saw real predators, which supports teh alarm call hypothesis. Finaly, we found that male chaffinches reain-called much more often when a femal chaffinch was around, which might hint that females are intended recievers of the rain-call alarm. 
We provide here the complete dataset for all thre experiment as well as the R code used to run statistical analyses. Variables and software versions are described further.

DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

File List: 
	- BehaviouralObservations.Rmd : R code used to run the statistical models on the behavioural observations
	- BehaviouralObservations_data.csv : data from the behavioural observations

	- PredatorPlaybackAnalysis.Rmd : R code used to perform statistical analysis on the playback of predator calls
	- PredPlayback_data.csv : data from the predator call playback

	- TerritoryPlaybackAnalysis.Rmd : R code used perform statistical analyzes of the territory playback 
	- RCPlayback_summary.csv : data from the territory playback 
	- RCPlayback_perphase.csv : data from the terrotry playback with behavioural responses split per playback phase (before, during and after broadcast)


METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION

R scripts have been run with R version 4.2.2, 2023.

package versions: 

bayespot 	1.10.0
tidyverse	2.0.0
ggeffects	3.4.1
rstan		2.32.6
rstanarm	2.32.1


DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: BehaviouralObservations_data.csv

Variable List: 

ID			ID of the territory
Session_nr		ID of the 10-minute observation block
Rain_call_presence	presence (1) or absence (0) of at least one rain-call during the 10-minute block
Female_YN_proportion	number of minutes during the 10-minute blocks where a female was visible to the observers
Predator_YN_proportion	number of minutes during the 10-minute blocks where a chaffinch predator (hawk or crow) was visible to the observers
Male_YN_proportion	number of minutes during the 10-minute blocks where another chaffinch male was heard singing
Time_dec_block		time (hours) relative to midnight of the start of the ten-minute block
Time_dec_block_scaled	time (hours) relative to midnight of the start of the ten-minute block centered on 10 (the approximate median time of observation)




DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: PredPlayback_data.csv

Variable List: 

Bird_ID			Identifier of the territory where the playback was performed
Lat_deg			Latitude (degree)
Long_deg		Longitude (degree)
Day			Day of experiment
Month			Month of the experiment
Hour			Hour of the broadcast
Min			Minute of the experiment
Tim_rel_sunrise		Time (hours) relative to sunrise
Playback		Playback type (control, hawk or crow)
DistInit_m		Distance between (m) the bird and the loudspeaker at the start of playback broadcast
DistInit_st		Distance between the bird and the loudspeaker at the start of the playback, centered on ?? and standardized by ??
Ambient_Noise_dBA	Peak LAf ambient noise (dB(A)) 
Noise_st		Ambient noise centered on the mean and standardized by 6 dB
Female			Female visible (present) or not (absent) during the playaback
Factivity		Flight activity (number of flights pr minute)
Sactivity		Song activity (number of songs per minute)
RC			Presence (present) or absence (absent) of at least one rain-call during the playabck
T2RC			Latency (seconds) until the first rain-call was heard. set to 360 (max duration of playback) if no rain-call heard
RC_rate			Number of rain-call per minute after the firt rain-call was heard
Time_left		Number of seconds during which we sampled the number of rain-calls (shorter if the first rain-call occured during after the predator broadcast ended)


DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: RCplayback_summary.csv

Variable List: 

ID			Identifier of the territory where the playback was performed
PB_type			Playback type (Raincall, song or blackbird control)	
Time_to_playback	Time (seconds) between the end of the initial 3-minute observation period and the start of playback 
Time_to_playback_scaled	Time to playback centered on the mean
PB_amplitude		Playback amplitude at 1m (dB (A))
PB_amplitude_scaled	Playback amplitude centered on the mean per playback type and standardized by 6 dB
Distance_initial	Distance (m) between the bird and the loudspeaker at the start of playback broadcast 
Distance_initial_scaled	Initial distance centered on the mean
Female_YN_total		female visible (yes) or absent (no) during th eexperiment
Rain_call_before	Presence (1) or absence (0) of raincalls during th e3-minute observation period before the start of playback broadcast
Rain_call_YN_during_after	Presence (1) or absence (0) of rain-calls after the start of playback broadcast
Latency_approach	Latency (seconds) between the start of playback broadcast and first flight towards teh loudpeaker
Approach_YN		Did the bird approach (1) the loudspeaker after teh start of playback broadcast or not (0)
Distance_min		Minimum distance (m) between the bird and the loudspeaker 



DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: RCplayback_perphase.csv

Variable List: 

ID			Identifier of the territory where the playback was performed
Latitude		Latitude (degree)
Longitude		Longitude (degree)
Date			Date of experiment (YYYY-mm-dd)
Time_end		Time at teh end of teh playback experiment (HH:MM)
PB_type			Playback type (Raincall, song or blackbird control)		
PB_phase		Phase of the experiment (before playback broadcast, during broadcast or after)
Distance_initial	Distance (m) between the bird and the loudspeaker at the start of playback broadcast 
Distance_initial_scaled	Initial distance centered on the mean
PB_amplitude		Playback amplitude at 1m (dB (A))
PB_amplitude_scaled	Playback amplitude centered on the mean per playback type and standardized by 6 dB
Time_to_playback	Time (seconds) between the end of the initial 3-minute observation period and the start of playback 	
Time_to_playback_scaled	Time to playback centered on XX
Female_YN_total		Female visible (yes) or absent (no) during the experiment
N_song_3		Number of complete songs (with florish)
N_flight		Number of flights
N_pink			Number of "pink" / "chink" alarm calls
N_rain_call		Number of rain-calls







