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An adult female brown-headed cowbird<\/strong> https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/ File:Molothrus_ater1.jpg<\/p><\/div>\n Researchers Kelly Ronald and colleagues addressed this by performing a study on brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater<\/em>).\u00a0 When trying to attract females, male cowbirds perform an elaborate visual display of wing-spreading and puffing combined with a song, meaning that their courting signal is multimodal in nature.\u00a0 The female uses this display as an indicator of male quality and it influences her eventual mating decision.\u00a0 The researchers in this study were trying to provide some preliminary evidence for whether the receiver\u2019s signal processing capabilities are influenced by one signal modality over the other.\u00a0 Essentially, they studied whether female cowbirds are sensory \u2018specialists,\u2019 meaning processing of one modality affects the processing of the other, or \u2018generalists,\u2019 where information can be processed well between both modalities and thus the ability may vary within a population.<\/p>\n An adult male brown-headed cowbird<\/strong> The researchers tested female cowbird auditory and temporal resolution, or environmentally, the ability to detect changes in wing movement and song, to determine whether there is a positive correlation between the two.\u00a0 A positive correlation would mean that the signals increase each other\u2019s filtering capacities and thus the female makes a decision about the male best when receiving a multimodal signal.\u00a0 Using electrodes that can measure brain response to sound, the researchers were able to equate how well the female cowbirds can resolve sound.\u00a0 They then determined auditory resolution by measuring eye responses to light pulses.\u00a0 The two resolutions were statistically compared to determine the correlation.<\/p>\n The results of the experiment did in fact reveal a positive correlation between the female cowbird\u2019s ability to resolve auditory and visual information, and this study provides some of the first evidence of their association.\u00a0 Female cowbirds are thus sensory \u2018generalists,\u2019 so those that can resolve the male\u2019s visual display well also resolve the auditory mode of it well. \u00a0This aids them in both discriminating among males and determining which ones are of the best quality for mating.\u00a0 This holds implications not only for how multimodal signals interact on the receiver\u2019s end, but also for the evolution of male signals that are preferential to females.\u00a0 If females prefer males with multimodal signals, then this may have driven the evolution of those signals.\u00a0 Who is to say that this couldn\u2019t exist among other animals?<\/p>\n References<\/span><\/p>\n Ronald, K.L., Sesterhenn, T.M., Fernandex-Juricic, E., & Lucas, J.R. (2017). The sensory \u00a0 substrate of multimodal communication in brown\u2010headed cowbirds: are females sensory \u2018specialists\u2019 or \u2018generalists\u2019?\u00a0Journal of Comparative Physiology A<\/em> 203: 935-943.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is relatively common in the animal kingdom that species will communicate with one another through more than one sensory modality; that is, they can combine auditory, visual, olfactory (smell), and other signal forms in their interactions with other individuals, … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/sensoryecology\/files\/2017\/11\/1024px-Molothrus_ater_2-1-300x200.jpg\")
https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/ File:Molothrus_ater_2.jpg<\/p><\/div>\n