ORIGINAL PAPER

Abstract Over the last few decades the animal communica-tion community has become increasingly aware that much communication occurs using multiple signals in multiple modalities. The majority of this work has been empiri-cal, with less theoretical work on the advantages conferred by such communication. In the present paper, we ask: Why should animals communicate with multiple signals in multiple modalities? To tackle this question we use game theoretic techniques, and highlight developments in the economic signaling literature that might offer insight into biological problems. We start by establishing a signaling game, and investigate signal honesty under two prevailing paradigms of honest communication – costly signaling and cheap talk. In both paradigms, without further constraint, it is simple to show that anything that can be achieved with multiple signals can be achieved with one. We go on to Communicated by E. A. Hebets This manuscript is part of the special issue Multimoda