Greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator) lead human honey-hunters to wild bees’ nests, in a rare example of a mutualistic foraging partnership between humans and free-living wild animals. We show experimentally that a specialized vocal sound made by Mozambican honey-hunters seeking bees’ nests elicits elevated cooperative behavior from honeyguides. The production of this sound increased the probability of being guided by a honeyguide from about 33 to 66% and the overall probability of thus finding a bees’ nest from 17 to 54%, as compared with other animal or human sounds of similar amplitude. These results provide experimental evidence that a wild animal in a natural setting responds adaptively to a human signal of cooperation.
Honeyguide location data
Column descriptions: BirdID: unique identifier for each radio-tracked honeyguide individual. Sex: the honeyguide's sex (Male/Female). Age: the honeyguide's age category when captured for radio-tagging (Adult/Immature). Mass: the honeyguide's body mass when captured for radio-tagging (g). Date: date of location (dd/mm/yy). Time: time of location (hh:mm). Latitude: latitude of location (d.ddddd). Longitude: longitude of location (d.ddddd). Source: type of location data (Capture/Telemetry/Resighting/Camera trap).
Home_Ranges.csv
Success of honeyguide-human interactions
Column descriptions: GuidingEventID: unique identifier for each guiding event, defined as a bout of guiding by an individual honeyguide. Success: whether or not the guiding event led to a bees' nest being found by the human followers (yes/no). Nests: how many bees' nests were found. BeeSpecies: the bee species to which the nest(s) belonged (sometimes >1 if >1 nest was found).
Notes: (1) Guiding events accompanied by a non-natural acoustic cue, and guiding events that led to a bees' nest already known to the observers, are excluded (see Materials and Methods). (2) "Stingless bee sp." refers to an unidentified species; see Materials and Methods.
Guiding_Success.csv
Bees' nests found
Column descriptions: Date: date on which the bees' nests was found (dd/mm/yy). Latitude: latitude of the bees' nest (d.ddddd). Longitude: longitude of the bees' nest (d.ddddd). Honeyguide: whether the nest was found with the help of a honeyguide (Yes) or without the help of a honeyguide (No). BeeSpecies: the bee species to which the nest belonged. Note: "Stingless bee sp." refers to an unidentified species; see Materials and Methods.
Bees_Nests.csv
Distance travelled to bees' nests shown by a honeyguide
Column descriptions: GuidingEventID: unique identifier for each guiding event, defined as a bout of guiding by an individual honeyguide. Start_Latitude: latitude of point where the honeyguide was detected starting guiding behaviour (d.ddddd). Start_Longitude: longitude of point where the honeyguide was detected starting guiding behaviour (d.ddddd). Bees_Latitude: latitude of bees' nest (d.ddddd). Bees_Longitude: longitude of bees' nest (d.ddddd). Distance: distance from point where the honeyguide was detected starting guiding behaviour, to bees' nest (m). Note: Guiding events sometimes led to more than one bees’ nest, but only the journey to the first bees' nest was analysed here.
Guiding_Distance.csv
Honeyguide initial flight direction relative to bees' nest direction
Column descriptions: GuidingEventID: unique identifier for each guiding event, defined as a bout of guiding by an individual honeyguide, sometimes to more than one bees’ nest. Bearing_Bees: bearing (angle in degrees) from the point where the honeyguide was detected starting guiding behaviour, to the bees' nest. Bearing_40m: bearing (angle in degrees) from the point where the honeyguide was detected starting guiding behaviour, to the point reached after the first 40 m of travel. Bearing_Difference: Bearing_40m relative to Bearing_Bees, with the latter set at zero (angle in degrees). Note: Guiding events accompanied by a non-natural acoustic cue, and guiding events that led to a bees' nest already known to the observers, are excluded (see Materials and Methods).
Guiding_Accuracy.csv
Experimental honey-hunting forays
Column descriptions: TransectID: unique identifier for each transect. Latitude: latitude of transect start point (d.ddddd). Longitude: longitude of transect start point (d.ddddd). Date: date on which the transect took place (dd/mm/yy). Time: time at which the transect started (hh:mm). AM/PM: whether the transect took place in the morning (AM) or afternoon (PM). Time_Sun: time at which the transect start measured in minutes from sunrise for morning transects, or to sunset for afternoon transects (h.hh). Temperature: measured at end of transect (degrees Celsius). Treatment: acoustic playback treatment type. Treatment_subtype: playback subtype for control playbacks. ExemplarID: unique identifier for each individual person or bird recorded as an exemplar. ExemplarMax30: maximum amplitude of playback exemplar recorded at 30 metres (dBA). ExemplarMean30: mean amplitude of playback exemplar recorded at 30 metres (dBA). ExemplarLength: length of playback exemplar (s.ss). Guided: whether a honeyguide initiated guiding behaviour (Yes/No). Bees: whether a bees' nest was found with a honeyguide's help (Yes/No). Distance_searched: linear distance from the point where the honeyguide was detected starting guiding behaviour, to the point where either bees' nest found or honey-hunters decided to stop searching (m).
Experimental_Transects.csv
Amplitudes of experimental playback sounds
Column descriptions: ExemplarID: unique identifier for each individual bird or human who provided recordings. Treatment: acoustic playback treatment type. Treatment_subtype: playback subtype for control playbacks. ExemplarMax3: maximum amplitude of playback exemplar recorded at 3 metres (dBA). ExemplarMean3: mean amplitude of playback exemplar recorded at 3 metres (dBA). ExemplarMax30: maximum amplitude of playback exemplar recorded at 30 metres (dBA). ExemplarMean30: mean amplitude of playback exemplar recorded at 30 metres (dBA). ExemplarLength: length of playback exemplar (s.ss).
Exemplar_Amplitudes.csv
