For four years, a team of zoologists from the universities of Liverpool and York has been studying the formation of mixed groups of herbivore species on the African savannahs in Masai Mara, Kenya.
Their findings, published in Ecology Letters, show that herbivores seek out the company of species with the most informative alarm calls who can alert them to the threat of nearby predators.
[...] In addition to informative alarm calls, vigilance and vulnerability were also found to be driving factors of social group formation. Species who are not themselves very vigilant were found to be more likely to join mixed groups, presumably to compensate for their lower ability to spot predators. Similarly, species deemed to be more vulnerable to predators were also more likely to seek out the security provided by being in a mixed group.
Dr. Jakob Bro-Jorgensen said: "Our study points to an intriguing complex social world where social relations between species range from mutually beneficial to parasitic.
"The impact of communication between species on social attraction and survival highlights the importance of taking behavioural links between species into account in order to understand how the natural world operates.
More information: Alarm communication networks as a driver of community structure in African savannah herbivores, Ecology Letters, DOI: 10.1111/ele.13432
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