Published October 29, 2024 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Data and code for "Decoding the chaffinch "rain" call: a specialized alarm signal for nest predation"

Authors/Creators

Description

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.

Files

BehavouralObservation_data.csv

Files (71.9 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:347fcdc90b3df22b1f675493cb287ec3
837 Bytes Download
md5:d2c52de4d3542143e955435a86706d4c
6.7 kB Preview Download
md5:b935c5e1d5d5a4ab8bc90c31bf86bc24
3.2 kB Download
md5:96b3448f00ec2298b365300378dc9d3f
8.8 kB Preview Download
md5:b75dbf7cded20acd2eede270505af3ad
7.9 kB Preview Download
md5:c66e6e776cca1e2b2685ab4cf738050d
37.6 kB Preview Download
md5:ba49cc7243f1dea108a7b3856bf3d1f8
3.7 kB Preview Download
md5:5b17a4d3a3c502be071c047a68efa9e3
3.1 kB Download