Data from: Signaler and receiver boldness influence response to alarm calls in eastern chipmunks

Using social information can benefit individuals in many ways. Responding to alarm signals can, for instance, maximize survival under predation risk. However, foraging individuals should consider the reliability of such risk-based information to balance anti-predator behavior and resource acquisition. Receiver decisions could depend on personality effects, as individual variation in risk-taking tendencies (i.e. boldness) could not only affect receiver perception of the signaled threat but also signaler reliability. Recent theoretical models support the possibility of coevolution between personality and communication strategies. Using a playback experiment, we show that wild eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus) respond to alarm calls according to their own boldness level (measured as consistent individual differences in basal vigilance) and that they increase their vigilance response to bolder callers potentially considered as more reliable. Further, receivers respond to the callers' boldness regardless of their own boldness and independently of their familiarity level with callers, therefore decoding this information from vocalizations. Such effects of individual behavioral variation on the perception and interpretation of social information could apply to signals used in a variety of ecological contexts.

利用社会信息可在诸多方面为个体带来益处。例如，对警戒信号作出响应，能够在捕食者威胁下最大化个体的生存概率。然而，觅食个体需考量此类基于风险的信息的可靠性，以平衡反捕食行为与资源获取行为之间的关系。接收者的决策可能受个性效应的影响，因为个体在冒险倾向（即大胆性（boldness））上的差异，不仅会影响接收者对所传递威胁的感知，还会影响其对信号发送者可靠性的判断。近期的理论模型支持个性与通讯策略之间存在共演化的可能性。通过回放实验，我们发现野生东部花栗鼠（Tamias striatus）会根据自身的大胆程度（以基础警戒行为的个体间稳定差异为衡量标准）对报警叫声作出响应，且会对被认为更可靠的更大胆的信号发送者提升自身的警戒响应水平。此外，接收者会依据信号发送者的大胆程度作出响应，而不受自身大胆程度以及与信号发送者熟悉程度的影响，因此可通过叫声解码此类社会信息。这种个体行为变异对社会信息感知与解读的影响，或可适用于多种生态情境下使用的各类信号。