Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP0665481

Funding Activity

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Funded Activity Summary

Interspecific communication and the evolution of alarm calls in birds. There are probably more papers on vocal communication in some individual European and American species of birds than there are on all Australian species combined. Our work will contribute to redressing this imbalance by carrying out detailed studies on acoustic communication in a major group of Australian songbirds (scrubwrens, fairy-wrens, honeyeaters and allies), while at the same time addressing an unsolved general problem in call design first identified 50 years ago in European songbirds. Specifically, we will test whether different prey species have repeatedly evolved 'hawk' alarm calls of similar structure, and whether such evolution could be due to benefits of having similar calls when communicating with other prey species.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2006

End Date: 31-12-2009

Funding Scheme: Discovery Projects

Funding Amount: $239,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Sociobiology And Behavioural Ecology | Ecology |

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

Biological sciences

Other Keywords

Biological sciences | Ecology | Sociobiology And Behavioural Ecology