Meeting Abstract

61.2  Saturday, Jan. 5  Alarm calls of Gunnison’s prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni) in response to two predators appearing simultaneously SLOBODCHIKOFF, CN; STERLING, KA*; DRAYTON, L; Northern Arizona University; Northern Arizona University; Duke University kas263@nau.edu

Gunnison’s prairie dogs encode descriptive information in their alarm calls in response to a predator’s species, size, color, and behavior. In two experiments, we analyzed alarm calls in response to two predators appearing simultaneously in order to determine whether the prairie dogs would create a unique and significantly different alarm call or would abstract the alarm call for each individual predator into a more generalized alarm call. In the first experiment we analyzed calls in response to a human and domestic dog, and in the second experiment we analyzed calls in response to a human female and human male. While the alarm calls for all treatments in both experiments were significantly different, our results suggest that the prairie dogs do encode some information about each predator in the combined alarm call. Results also show that the prairie dog’s alarm call system is both flexible and sophisticated enough to effectively communicate an unusual predatory threat encompassing approximately twice as much information as an alarm call for a single predator.