Response to heterospecific calls in rallids

In this research I wanted to test whether water rail and little crake recognise each other's calls. Playback experiment was performed and each focal pair was subjected to four treatments: 1) a conspecific treatment, during which water rails received water rail calls (WR) and little crakes received little crake calls (LC); 2) a sympatric Rallidae treatment, during which water rails received calls of little crakes and vice versa; 3) a sympatric non-Rallidae treatment, during which water rails and little crakes were presented by calls of the little grebe (LG); and 4) a non-sympatric Rallidae treatment, during which water rails and little crakes received calls of the spotted crake (SC). Vocal and non-vocal response was measured. Description of call variants (water rail) and call types (little crake) can be found in Jedlikowski et al. 2021.