IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v17y2006i4p547-553.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Predator-elicited visual signal: why the turquoise-browed motmot wag-displays its racketed tail

Author

Listed:
  • Troy G. Murphy

Abstract

Both sexes of the turquoise-browed motmot (Eumomota superciliosa) perform a wag-display in the presence of predators, whereby their long racketed tail is repeatedly rocked side-to-side in a pendulous fashion. I tested 3 hypotheses for the function of the predator-elicited wag-display: 1) pursuit-deterrent signal, 2) warning alarm signal, and 3) self-preservation alarm signal. These hypotheses were evaluated by testing whether the presence of potential receivers (kin, conspecifics, mate) modified the way in which the wag-display was performed. Data on wag-display were collected when I experimentally presented predators to motmots and when naturally occurring predators were observed at nesting colonies. The wag-display was performed by male and female motmots who were 1) alone and not within signaling distance of conspecifics, 2) unpaired and therefore not signaling to a mate, and 3) paired but away from their mate. Motmots in these contexts performed the wag-display with similar probability and in a similar manner as individuals that were within signaling distance of conspecifics, paired birds, and paired birds who were near their mate. These results support the hypothesis that the predator-elicited wag-display is directed to the predator and functions as a pursuit-deterrent signal. Copyright 2006.

Suggested Citation

  • Troy G. Murphy, 2006. "Predator-elicited visual signal: why the turquoise-browed motmot wag-displays its racketed tail," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 17(4), pages 547-553, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:17:y:2006:i:4:p:547-553
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arj064
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Breanna J. Putman & Rulon W. Clark, 2015. "The fear of unseen predators: ground squirrel tail flagging in the absence of snakes signals vigilance," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(1), pages 185-193.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:17:y:2006:i:4:p:547-553. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.