| dc.description.abstract | By using social information gathered from other individuals, animals can bypass the costs and risks of gathering information themselves. Acoustic social information can be particularly useful as sound can propagate very rapidly over long distances. Acoustic social information can facilitate social learning about
novel risks, such as novel predators, which may be important for young animals that are vulnerable to predation. However, the transmission or reception of
acoustic social information may be impacted by anthropogenic disturbance, such as noise and light pollution, which can mask signals or impact cognition by disturbing sleep. As a result, social groups may face challenges in coordinating collective behaviours, which could confer considerable fitness impacts. This
study on Eurasian jackdaws (Corvus monedula) firstly investigates how jackdaw nestlings may use social learning and predispositions towards relevant stimuli to learn about novel predators. We found that when predator calls were paired with jackdaw alarm calls, nestlings learned to increase their rates of vigilance. In
contrast, rates of vigilance did not change after hearing predator calls in association with jackdaw contact calls. Responses to the non-predator were not
affected by pairing with either alarm or contact calls. This suggests that jackdaw nestlings can socially learn about novel calls but show innate preparedness towards learning fear-relevant stimuli. Furthermore, by using audio and video monitoring, we investigated the influence of anthropogenic disturbance on
vocalisations and collective movements at winter roost sites that varied in levels of urbanisation. We found that when levels of background noise were higher, jackdaws took longer to settle following arrival at the roost in the evening and also called more during the night, suggesting that human disturbance may cause sleep disruption. High levels of overnight calling were linked to disruption of vocal consensus decision-making and less cohesive group departures in the morning. These results raise the possibility that, by affecting cognitive and perceptual processes, human activities may interfere with animals’ ability to
coordinate collective behaviour. Overall, this thesis presents novel evidence of preparedness towards predatory stimuli in socially learnt predator recognition in a wild avian species, as well as effects of anthropogenic disturbance on sleep and the coordination of collective behaviour. | en_GB |
