Socially isolated marmots call more

Holly writes:

Adriana, Dan, and I recently published a paper in Behavioral Ecology examining whether social network position influenced marmot alarm calling. We identified two social attributes, popularity and relationship strength, and determined that socially isolated marmots called more frequently during behavioral observations and when caught in traps. We suspect that these marmots are calling directly at predators to try to scare them away or to try to increase their social status within their group. Our results open a pathway for further research dealing with antipredator behaviors and social network position.

This study has recently been picked up in ScienceShots, and hopefully we'll be learning more about these misfit marmots soon!