Location and caller familiarity influence mobbing behaviour and the likely ecological impact of noisy miners around colony edges

Mobbing is a widespread, vocally coordinated behaviour where species approach and harass a threat. The noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) is a notorious native Australian honeyeater, well-known for its hyperaggressive mobbing. Numerous studies have identified negative impacts of their mobbing behaviour, highlighting the exclusion of competitors from colony areas and the resulting loss of woodland-bird biodiversity. Despite this, few studies have investigated mobbing itself, and our understanding of the factors which influence its expression remains limited. Here, we use a field-based playback experiment to investigate whether mobbing responses vary in relation to colony borders and caller familiarity. Noisy miners were more likely to respond, reacted more quickly, and responded more strongly to mobbing calls broadcast inside as opposed to outside the colony. These behavioural differences likely arise from variation in the relative costs and benefits of responding. When noisy miners di..., Study site and species
Noisy miners are medium-sized (~ 70g) native Australian honeyeaters that live in persistent, year-round colonies across eastern and southern Australia (Higgins 2001). Consisting of up to several hundred birds, colonies occupy discrete areas of open eucalypt and urban habitat, preferring areas with a high edge-to-interior ratio (Taylor et al. 2008). Colonies are made up of highly-social cooperatively breeding subgroups, known as ‘coteries’, containing up to 20 individuals in over-lapping ‘activity spaces’ (Dow 1978; Dow & Whitmore 1990). Coterie members regularly interact with one another within these activity spaces, including foraging, roosting, and regular mobbing behaviour. Cross-coterie groups also form during larger mobbing events as birds leave these centres of activity to chase other noisy miners or mob heterospecifics (Arnold 2000). Noisy miners are highly aggressive to a range of species, actively expelling both avian predators and other small to medi..., , # Location and caller familiarity influence mobbing behaviour and the likely ecological impact of noisy miners around colony edges

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xsj3tx9pf](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xsj3tx9pf)

## Description of the data and file structure

#### **Mobbing_playbacks_responses_data.csv**

Responses recorded during playback experiments broadcasting chur-calls.

Trial: 1-6, denotes playback set. Six playback sets were conducted, where each playback set comprised four treatments: familiar chur calls broadcast inside the colony (‘familiar inside’), unfamiliar chur calls broadcast inside the colony (‘unfamiliar inside’), familiar chur calls broadcast outside the colony (‘familiar outside’), and unfamiliar chur calls broadcast outside the colony (‘unfamiliar outside’).

Treatment: Familiar inside, Unfamiliar inside, Familiar outside, Unfamiliar outside.

CallerType: Familiar/Unfamiliar. Chur calls used in the ‘familiar’ treatments were recorded at different locations withi...