DOI: 10.5061/dryad.j9kd51ckc
title: Data from: Not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf: calls from large predators do not silence mesopredators

description: Large predators are known to shape the behavior and ecology of sympatric
 predators via conflict and competition, with mesopredators thought to
 avoid large predators, while dogs suppress predator activity and act as
 guardians of human property. However, interspecific communication between
 predators has not been well-explored and this assumption of avoidance may
 oversimplify the responses of the species involved. We explored the
 acoustic activity of three closely related sympatric canids: wolves Canis
 lupus, coyotes Canis latrans, and dogs Canis familiaris. These species
 have an unbalanced triangle of risk: coyotes, as mesopredators, are at
 risk from both apex-predator wolves and human-associated dogs, while
 wolves fear dogs, and dogs may fear wolves as apex predators or challenge
 them as intruders into human-allied spaces. We predicted that risk
 perception would dictate vocal response with wolves and dogs silencing
 coyotes as well as dogs silencing wolves. Dogs, in their protective role
 of guarding human property, would respond to both. Eleven passive acoustic
 monitoring devices were deployed across 13 nights in Central Wisconsin,
 and we measured the responses of each species to naturally occurring
 heterospecific vocalizations. Against our expectation, silencing did not
 occur. Instead, coyotes were not silenced by either species: when hearing
 wolves, coyotes responded at greater than chance rates and when hearing
 dogs, coyotes did not produce fewer calls than chance rates. Similarly,
 wolves responded at above chance rates to coyotes and at chance rates when
 hearing dogs. Only the dogs followed our prediction and responded at above
 chance rates in response to both coyotes and wolves. Thus, instead of
 silencing their competitors, canid vocalizations elicit responses from
 them suggesting the existence of a complex heterospecific communication
 network.
description: # Not Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf: calls from large predators do not
 silence mesopredators ##
 tabBoutForDryad.xlsx \==================== This file contains all the
 manual detections of wolves, dogs, coyotes, and trains from the study
 period, combined into bouts (i.e., detections from the same device
 separated by a small time interval have been combined - see the paper
 text). Note that other detections (owls, deer, humans, etc) have been
 removed. Each line shows a separate bout with start time and end time in
 Matlab time format (days), as well as in readable text. Length is in
 seconds. The "Species" column indicates which animal species (C
 - coyote, D - dog, W - wolf, T - train). The "Device" column
 indicates on which recording device the detection was made. Each device
 was placed in a different location in the study deployment (see Figure 1
 in the paper). Bouts that occured on different devices at the same time
 were examined manually to see whether they were likely to have been the
 same or separate events. OnsetContingencyTable.m \=======================
 Matlab script to calculate the onset contingency table for stimulus and
 focal species (see section 2.5.i in the paper). Parameters to the script
 are subsets of the bout table above, each for a particular species only.