Fort Hays State University FHSU Scholars Repository Master's Theses Graduate School Fall 2011 Alarm-Calling And Response Behaviors Of The Black-Tailed Prairie Dog In Kansas Lloyd W. Towers III Fort Hays State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.fhsu.edu/theses Part of the Biology Commons Recommended Citation Towers, Lloyd W. III, "Alarm-Calling And Response Behaviors Of The lB ack-Tailed Prairie Dog In Kansas" (2011). Master's Theses. 158. https://scholars.fhsu.edu/theses/158 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at FHSU Scholars Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of FHSU Scholars Repository. ALARM-CALLING AND RESPONSE BEHAVIORS OF THE BLACK-TAILED PRAIRIE DOG IN KANSAS being A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the Fort Hays State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Lloyd Winston Towers III B.S., Texas A&M University Date_____________________ Approved__________________________________ Major Professor Approved__________________________________ Chair, Graduate Council This Thesis for The Master of Science Degree By Lloyd Winston Towers III Has Been Approved __________________________________ Chair, Supervisory Committee __________________________________ Supervisory Committee __________________________________ Supervisory Committee __________________________________ Supervisory Committee __________________________________ Chair, Department of Biological Sciences i This thesis is written in the style appropriate for publication in the Journal of Mammalogy. ii ABSTRACT Prairie dogs ( Cynomys spp.) use alarm calls to warn offspring and other kin of predatory threats. Dialects occur when vocalizations contain consistent differences among populations not isolated by geographic barriers. The Gunnison’s prairie dog (C. gunnisoni) has dialects in its alarm calls. The objectives of my study were to: (1) assess if the black-tailed prairie dog (C. ludovicianus) responded differently to alarm calls from other colonies than it did to alarm calls from its own colony, and (2) detect dialects, if they existed, in the alarm calls of the black-tailed prairie dog. The study included 8 black-tailed prairie dog colonies in western and central Kansas. I obtained alarm calls by using a human (Homo sapiens) predator model. Playback experiments were conducted at each study colony by using alarm calls recorded at all 8 colonies. I also compared alarm calls within and among different colonies. The geographic origin of an alarm call did not appear to have an effect on how the black-tailed prairie dog responded to the call. The black-tailed prairie dog might respond to an alarm call regardless of the colony of its origin because: (1) the alarm call encodes information about the predator and (2) my sites might have all been part of a larger historic colony. My data suggested the black-tailed prairie dog did not appear to have dialects in its alarm call. Dialects in the alarm call might not exist because they might not have any adaptive value. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank the following individuals, for without them I could not have accomplished this thesis. I thank my advisor, Dr. Elmer J. Finck, and the rest of my graduate committee, Dr. Jack F. Cully, Dr. Greg H. Farley, and Dr. Brian R. Maricle, for their patience, guidance, suggestions, and support. I thank the following organizations and landowners for allowing me onto their property and providing advice for recording locations: The Nature Conservancy (Randy Martin), The U.S. National Park Service, Larry and Betty Haverfield, Norman Johanning, Dolores Rusco, and Richard Schroder. I am very grateful to Dr. John L. Hoogland and Dr. Con N. Slobodchikoff for their suggestions and feedback on prairie dog behavior. I thank the following individuals for informing me of black-tailed prairie dog town locations: Zachary Eddy, Chasen Gann, Stephanie Kane, Pamela Martin, and Curtis Wolf. I am especially grateful to Jessica Casey for helping me characterize my study sites from a floral perspective. Although I was unable to use the following materials in my research, I thank Dr. Jack F. Cully for the badgermobile, Curtis Schmidt for providing the badger ( Taxidea taxus) specimen, Zachary Schwenke for helping me prepare the badger skin, and Chasen Gann for helping me make platforms. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Robert B. Channell for his help with my statistical analyses. The following people also provided statistical assistance: Alex Galt, Darren Gemoets, and Ryan Pinkall. I am especially grateful to Anthony Dalisio for helping me understand the Raven Pro software and introducing me to the Spectrographic Cross-Correlation analysis. I thank Brandon Calderon, Amanda iv Cheeseman, and Victoria Cikanek for their help with GIS. I truly appreciate Dr. Jordge LaFantasie, Justin Anderson, Elita Baldridge, and Curtis Wolf for taking time to help edit sections of my thesis. I thank Casey Brown, Phillip Sechtem, and Andrew Tincknell for their explanations about sounds and sound software. I also appreciate the assistance of the Raven support team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for their quick and helpful responses, especially Tim Krein and Laura Strickhart. I am very grateful to Sheran Powers and the student helpers at Forsyth Library of Fort Hays State University for their prompt responses to my many interlibrary loan requests. I also thank the Department of Biological Sciences at Fort Hays State University and the Kansas Wetlands Education Center for providing me with the assistantships that helped support me through graduate school. Finally, I would be nowhere without the constant patience, loving guidance, and never-diminishing support of my parents Lloyd W. Towers II and Kathy Towers; my sisters Emily Breclaw and Hillary Shenkle; my brothers-in-law Derrick Breclaw and Bob Shenkle; my nephews Andrew Breclaw and Wyatt Shenkle; and my nieces Molly, Sarah, and Rose Breclaw and Madelyn Shenkle. Thank you all for being the unfaltering foundation of my life. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE ........................................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... ix LIST OF APPENDICES .................................................................................................... xi INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 MATERIALS AND METHODS .........................................................................................5 Study sites.................................................................................................................5 Alarm call recording ................................................................................................6 Analyses of .mp3 and .wav formats ..........................................................................8 Playback observation ...............................................................................................8 Analyses of playback experiments ...........................................................................9 Preparation of sound files for analysis ..................................................................10 Analyses of dialects ................................................................................................10 RESULTS ..........................................................................................................................13 Comparison of .mp3 and .wav files ........................................................................13 Playback experiments ............................................................................................13 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTINUED) Page Dialect experiments ...............................................................................................14 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................16 LITERATURE CITED ......................................................................................................22 vii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 The first 11 Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCO) axes and their corresponding eigenvalues produced by the Principal Coordinates Analysis for black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) alarm calls ........................................................28 2 Measurements recorded from black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) alarm calls after the Spectrographic Cross-Correlation. Values presented include duration of the call and number of syllables in the call. The number of peaks was the number of peaks in the harmonics, number of harmonics was the number of harmonics in the call, maximum harmonic frequency was the frequency of the highest full harmonic,