Multiple community informants enhance public information in a transition zone

Avian communities rely on "community informants" to mitigate predation risk, yet the synergistic effects of jointly present informant types—such as tits and babblers—remain poorly understood across biogeographical scales. This dataset provides comprehensive records of anti-predator vocalizations and social network metrics collected from 10 nature reserves across a latitudinal gradient in China. The study area represents a natural transition zone where northern tit-structured communities meet southern babbler-structured communities.The dataset includes raw observation counts, vocalization latency, call rates, and frequency ranges elicited by taxidermic predator models. Trials were categorized based on four group compositions: groups containing both tits and babblers, babblers only, tits only, or neither. Furthermore, species-species interaction networks were constructed using the Simple Ratio Index (SRI) for both mobbing and multi-species flocking (MSF) events. Social network properties, including weighted degree (WD), network density (DEN), and modularity (MOD), are provided at both transect and reserve levels.Our data reveal that the joint presence of tits and babblers enhances anti-predator signaling through mechanisms that shift from quantitative amplification (low-risk) to qualitative broadening of frequency ranges (high-risk). Network connectivity reached a mid-latitude peak, mirroring the high prevalence of mixed tit-babbler groups. This dataset offers significant reuse potential for researchers studying avian sociobiology, acoustic ecology, and the impacts of biogeographical gradients on social information processing. It contains cleaned Excel data and reproducible R scripts (LMMs/GLMMs) for meta-analysis and comparative studies.