Animal Behaviour Group, Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, 3086, Australia.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2022 May;208(3):373-385. doi: 10.1007/s00359-022-01544-3. Epub 2022 Feb 3.
Animals signals must be detected by receiver sensory systems, and overcome a variety of local ecological factors that could otherwise affect their transmission and reception. Habitat structure, competition, avoidance of unintended receivers and varying environmental conditions have all been shown to influence how animals signal. Environmental noise is also crucial, and animals modify their behavior in response to it. Animals generating movement-based visual signals have to contend with wind-blown plants that generate motion noise and can affect the detection of salient movements. The lizard Amphibolurus muricatus uses tail flicking at the start of displays to attract attention, and we hypothesized that tail movements are ideally suited to this function. We compared visual amplitudes generated by tail movements with push-ups, which are a key component of the rest of the display. We show that tail movement amplitudes are highly variable over the course of the display but consistently greater than amplitudes generated by push-ups and not constrained by viewing position. We suggest that these features, combined with the tail being a light structure that does not compromise other activities, provide an ideal introductory component for attracting attention in the ecological setting in which they are generated.
动物信号必须被接收者的感官系统检测到，并克服各种可能影响其传播和接收的局部生态因素。栖息地结构、竞争、避免意外的接收者以及不断变化的环境条件都被证明会影响动物的信号传递方式。环境噪声也很关键，动物会根据环境噪声来调整自身行为。产生基于运动的视觉信号的动物必须应对风吹植物产生的运动噪声，这可能会影响显著运动的检测。蜥蜴 Amphibolurus muricatus 在展示开始时用甩尾来吸引注意力，我们假设尾巴的运动非常适合这个功能。我们比较了尾巴运动产生的视觉幅度与俯卧撑产生的视觉幅度，俯卧撑是展示其余部分的关键组成部分。我们发现，尾巴运动的幅度在展示过程中变化很大，但始终大于俯卧撑产生的幅度，并且不受观察位置的限制。我们认为，这些特征，再加上尾巴是一个轻盈的结构，不会影响其他活动，为它们在产生的生态环境中吸引注意力提供了一个理想的起始组件。
