Foragers rely on various cues to assess predation risk. Information theory predicts that high certainty cues should be valued more than low certainty cues. We measured the latency of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) to resume feeding during winter in response to cues that conferred different degrees of certainty about current predation risk: a high certainty visual cue (predator mount) and a lower certainty acoustic cue (conspecific mobbing calls), presented either alone or in combination. As predicted, chickadees took longer to resume feeding after the visual than the acoustic cue, and this effect was greatest under conditions of high starvation risk (i.e. low temperatures). Presenting both cues together produced the same foraging delay as the visual cue alone under low starvation risk, but surprisingly, resulted in lower responses under high starvation risk compared to the visual cue alone. We suggest that this may be due to prey using a form of information updating, whereby differences in the timing of perception of acoustic versus visual cues interacts with energetic constraint to shape perceived risk. Although the sequential perception of cues is likely in a range of decision-making contexts, studies manipulating the order in which cues are perceived are needed to test existing models of multimodal cue integration.

中文翻译：

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捕食风险的视觉线索胜过听觉线索：黑头山雀的野外实验

觅食者依靠各种线索来评估捕食风险。信息论预测高确定性线索应该比低确定性线索更有价值。我们测量了黑顶山雀（Poecile atricapillus）在冬季恢复进食的潜伏期，以响应赋予当前捕食风险不同程度确定性的线索：高确定性视觉线索（捕食者坐骑）和较低确定性听觉线索（同种围攻电话），单独或组合呈现。正如预测的那样，山雀在视觉提示后恢复进食的时间比听觉提示要长，这种影响在高饥饿风险（即低温）的条件下最大。在低饥饿风险下，将两种线索放在一起产生与单独视觉线索相同的觅食延迟，但令人惊讶的是，与单独的视觉提示相比，在高饥饿风险下导致较低的反应。我们认为这可能是由于猎物使用了一种信息更新形式，由此声学与视觉线索感知时间的差异与能量约束相互作用以塑造感知风险。尽管线索的顺序感知可能在一系列决策环境中出现，但需要研究操纵感知线索的顺序来测试现有的多模态线索整合模型。