Acoustic similarity of flight calls corresponds with the composition and structure of mixed-species flocks of migrating birds: evidence from a three-dimensional microphone array
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Animals that migrate in mixed-species groups may communicate with both conspecific and heterospecific individuals, providing a low-cost mechanism for navigation whenever individuals share similar migratory routes or destinations. Many migratory birds produce calls while flying, but the function of these calls, and the forces contributing to their evolution, are poorly known. We studied flight calls in mixed-species groups of wood warblers (Parulidae), a biodiverse group of migratory songbirds. We used a spatial approach to examine whether acoustic similarity of flight calls varies with group composition, recording flight calls of mixed-species flocks with a wireless microphone array and triangulating the positions of birds in three dimensions. We found that the acoustic similarity of flight calls was correlated with spatial proximity: birds with similar calls fly closer together during migration. We also found relationships between acoustic similarity, flock size and mixed-species flock diversity: birds with similar calls fly in smaller flocks and in flocks with lower species diversity. Our results support the idea that migrating birds use flight calls to maintain contact with acoustically similar individuals in mixed-species flocks, with communication transcending species boundaries. These results suggest that acoustically similar flight calls are used as cues of group assembly for migratory animals. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mixed-species groups and aggregations: shaping ecological and behavioural patterns and processes'.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".