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ABSTRACT
Group-living animals must remain cohesive and coordinate their behaviour to benefit from social life. Communication is therefore central to collective decision-making. In this talk, I introduce how white-winged choughs, highly social cooperative breeders, integrate multiple features of alarm and contact communication to coordinate antipredator behaviour and maintain cohesion. First, I show that adult choughs possess a functionally referential alarm-call system that conveys threat type and urgency, enabling context-specific responses. However, young choughs develop appropriate responses extremely slowly, remaining poor at interpreting alarm calls for several months after fledging. This unusually prolonged development suggests that extended social protection and vocal complexity shape learning in this species. I then demonstrate that choughs integrate multiple components of social alarm information. They assess urgency to decide what action to take, and numerical reliability to modulate both the intensity of their response and the likelihood of propagating alarm information to others. This decision rule helps reduce false alarms and unnecessary information cascades that can negatively affect group living. Finally, I reveal that even simple pure-tone calls can convey complex messages. Choughs produce aerial whistles to high-flying hawks and contact whistles when visually separated from the group. Aerial whistles trigger distinctive upward scanning, whereas contact whistles from familiar group members elicit searching behaviour and vocal replies—highlighting roles in both predator detection and social cohesion. Together, these findings show how social animals integrate urgency, reliability, and familiarity across communication systems to maintain group safety and cohesion in complex societies.

BIOGRAPHY
I grew up in a small mountainous township in Taiwan, where I developed a strong passion for wildlife, especially birds. I studied Biology at Kaohsiung Medical University and later completed a Master’s degree at National Taiwan University, exploring how environmental factors shape the formation of mixed-species bird flocks. This experience deepened my interest in social behaviour and how animals benefit from group living. After my Master’s, I worked as a research assistant on various animal ecology projects in Taiwan and also engaged in science communication as a nature columnist. In 2020, I was awarded a PhD scholarship at the Australian National University, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the program. After a two-year interruption, I began studying one of the most social and fascinating birds—the white-winged chough—focusing on their communication and group coordination. My research interests span social behaviour, collective decision-making, and communication in wild animals.