Research Agenda

This page has some of the most important sources I used during my research and included in my scicomm article this quarter. All are focused on animal behavior, especially around predators.

 

 

Scicomm Article Research Studies

 

Suzuki, Toshitaka N. “Other Species’ Alarm Calls Evoke a Predator-Specific Search Image in Birds.” Current Biology, vol. 30, no. 13, 2020, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.062.

 

Title: "Other Species’ Alarm Calls Evoke a Predator-Specific Search Image in Birds"

Toshitaka N. Suzuki is a researcher who conducted a study on the predator-specific search image in birds. The study was published in 2020 in Current Biology, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The study involved exposing birds to alarm calls of other bird species and recording their behavioral responses. The researchers found that the birds were more likely to scan the sky for predators when they heard alarm calls from birds that are typically preyed upon by predators.

The study shows that birds are able to form predator-specific search images based on the alarm calls of other bird species, which expands our understanding of how birds perceive and respond to their environment.

 

This is the newest publication of the three that continues the ideas of the other while putting them into a realistic perspective. It expands on the specific interpretations of calls between birds, and how they can create the mental image of a specific predator across species.

 

Engesser, Sabrina, et al. “Experimental Evidence for Phonemic Contrasts in a Nonhuman Vocal System.” PLOS Biology, vol. 13, no. 6, 2015, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002171.

 

Title: "Experimental Evidence for Phonemic Contrasts in a Nonhuman Vocal System"

 

Sabrina Engesser is a researcher who conducted a study on a nonhuman vocal system. It was published in PLOS Biology, in June 2015. The researchers trained two monkeys to produce vocalizations in response to specific objects. They then played back these vocalizations to other monkeys, who were able to distinguish between them and respond. The study found that the tamarins were able to use different vocalizations to differentiate between objects. The study shows that monkey vocalizations are not random but have specific meanings. This expands our understanding of the communication abilities of other animals and helps us unsterand how their language model works.

 

I want to use this study to expand on Suzuki's ideas of language models that may be applicable to other animals. I think it would help readers to understand that the themes of Suzuki's research are not only applicable to closely related birds.

 

 

Potvin, Dominique A., et al. “Birds Learn Socially to Recognize Heterospecific Alarm Calls by Acoustic Association.” Current Biology, vol. 28, no. 16, 2018, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.013.

 

Title: "Birds Learn Socially to Recognize Heterospecific Alarm Calls by Acoustic Association."

 

Dominique A. Potvin is an ecologist affiliated with the University of Zurich. The article was published in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Current Biology in 2018. The researchers conducted an experiment to investigate whether birds can learn to recognize and respond to alarm calls from other bird species based on specific vocalizations. They used playbacks of alarm calls to test the responses of birds, and found that they associated the alarm calls with predators. This shows birds can recognize and respond to alarm calls from other species, which has important implications for our understanding of bird communication and behavior.

 

This is very similar to Suzuki's study and shows that his ideas have been studied before, further solidifying his claims. It also shows that his study was not an isolated incident.

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