How nestling birds acoustically monitor parents and predators
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The likelihood that nestling songbirds survive until leaving the nest depends largely on how well they are fed by parents and how well they escape detection by predators. Both factors in turn are affected by the nestling's begging display, a combination of gaping, posturing, and calling that stimulates feedings from parents but can also attract nest predators. If nestlings are to be fed without being eaten themselves, they must beg readily to parents but avoid begging when predators are near the nest. Here we describe experiments to determine how nestling tree swallows, Tachycineta bicolor, use acoustic cues to detect the arrival of parents with food and to monitor the presence of predators, in order to beg optimally relative to their need for food. We also discuss how their assessments vary in relation to two constraints: their own poor perceptual abilities and ambient background noise. Together with similar work on other species, our research suggests that acoustically conveyed information on predation risk has been an important selective force on parent-offspring communication. More generally, how birds acoustically monitor their environment to avoid predation is an increasingly productive area of research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".