Communication and social behaviour

How monotremes and marsupials communicate and socially interact is paramount to their survival and reproductive success. Unfortunately, the majority of species are small, secretive and nocturnal, making the fundamental objective of behavioural study, observation and description, difficult in free-ranging animals. As a result, detailed studies of communication avenues, social behaviour and social organisation are only available, at present, for relatively few monotreme and marsupial species. In addition, a considerable portion of this information has been derived from captive individuals without corresponding field investigation, i.e., validation of captive studies in the field. Despite these shortcomings, a large body of information can be found in the literature and the main function of this chapter is to synthesise this information. For monotremes and marsupials, the different communication signal modalities (and the importance of each in different genera) and common social interaction types are reviewed and discussed. Due to the extensive scope and numerous facets associated with communication and social behaviour, it is impossible to cover all content related to this subject matter within this chapter. As such, life history strategies, mating systems, reproductive strategies, foraging strategies/behaviour, activity patterns, habitat selection, distribution and spacing/spatial behaviour have not been discussed.