Song overlapping, ambient noise and territorial aggression in great tits

Abstract

Animals often communicate with each other in noisy environments where interference from the ambient noise and other signallers may reduce the effectiveness of signals. Signalling behaviours may also evolve to interfere with signals of their opponents, e.g. by temporally overlapping them with their own, such as the song overlapping behaviour that is seen in some songbirds during aggressive interactions. Song overlapping has been proposed to be a signal of aggressive intent, but few studies directly examined the association between song overlapping and aggressive behaviours of the overlapping bird (the predictive criterion). In the present paper we examined the question of whether song overlapping is correlated with aggressive behaviours displayed during a simulated territorial intrusion in a population of great tits (Parus major) living in an urban-rural gradient. We also examined whether aggressive behaviours are correlated with the ambient noise levels. We found that overlapping was associated negatively with aggressive behaviours males displayed against a simulated intruder. These results fail to support the predictive criterion for song overlapping, raising the question whether overlapping is in fact a signal of aggressive intent. Ambient noise levels were associated positively with aggressive behaviours but did not correlate with song rate, song duration or song overlapping. Great tits in noisy urban habitats may display higher levels of aggressive behaviours due to either interference of noise in aggressive communication or another indirect effect of noise.