The relative effectiveness of signaling systems: relying on external items reduces signaling accuracy while leks increase accuracy.

Abstract

Multiple evolutionary phenomena require individual animals to assess conspecifics based on behaviors, morphology, or both. Both behavior and morphology can provide information about individuals and are often used as signals to convey information about quality, motivation, or energetic output. In certain cases, conspecific receivers of this information must rank these signaling individuals based on specific traits. The efficacy of information transfer associated within a signal is likely related to the type of trait used to signal, though few studies have investigated the relative effectiveness of contrasting signaling systems. I present a set of models that represent a large portion of signaling systems and compare them in terms of the ability of receivers to rank signalers accurately. Receivers more accurately assess signalers if the signalers use traits that do not require non-food resources; similarly, receivers more accurately ranked signalers if all the signalers could be observed simultaneously, similar to leks. Surprisingly, I also found that receivers are only slightly better at ranking signaler effort if the effort results in a cumulative structure. This series of findings suggests that receivers may attend to specific traits because the traits provide more information relative to others; and similarly, these results may explain the preponderance of morphological and behavioral display signals.