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Parejo-Pulido D, Pérez-Rodríguez L, Abril-Colón I, Potti J, Redondo T. Passive and active parental food allocation in a songbird. Behav Ecol 2023; 34:729-740. [PMID: 37744166 PMCID: PMC10516681 DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arad043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2022] [Revised: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 09/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Parent-offspring conflict over food allocation can be modeled using two theoretical frameworks: passive (scramble competition) and active choice (signaling) resolution models. However, differentiating between these models empirically can be challenging. One possibility involves investigating details of decision-making by feeding parents. Different nestling traits, related to competitive prowess or signaling cryptic condition, may interact additively or non-additively as predictors of parental feeding responses. To explore this, we experimentally created even-sized, small broods of pied flycatchers and manipulated nestling cryptic quality, independently of size, by vitamin E supplementation. We explored how interactions between nestling cryptic condition, size, signals, and spatial location predicted food allocation and prey-testing by parents. Parents created the potential for spatial scramble competition between nestlings by feeding from and to a narrow range of nest locations. Heavier supplemented nestlings grew faster and were more likely to access profitable nest locations. However, the most profitable locations were not more contested, and nestling turnover did not vary in relation to spatial predictability or food supply. Postural begging was only predicted by nestling hunger and body mass, but parents did not favor heavier nestlings. This suggests that size-mediated and spatial competition in experimental broods was mild. Pied flycatcher fathers allocated food in response to nestling position and begging order, while mothers seemingly followed an active choice mechanism involving assessment of more complex traits, including postural intensity interacting with order, position, and treatment, and perhaps other stimuli when performing prey-testings. Differences in time constraints may underlie sex differences in food allocation rules.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel Parejo-Pulido
- Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC), CSIC-UCLM-JCCM, Ronda de Toledo 12, 13005 Ciudad Real, Spain
| | - Lorenzo Pérez-Rodríguez
- Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC), CSIC-UCLM-JCCM, Ronda de Toledo 12, 13005 Ciudad Real, Spain
| | - Inmaculada Abril-Colón
- Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN), CSIC, Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain
| | - Jaime Potti
- Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD), CSIC, Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Seville, Spain
| | - Tomás Redondo
- Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD), CSIC, Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Seville, Spain
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2
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Antonson ND, Schelsky WM, Tolman D, Kilner RM, Hauber ME. Niche construction through a Goldilocks principle maximizes fitness for a nest-sharing brood parasite. Proc Biol Sci 2022; 289:20221223. [PMID: 36100018 PMCID: PMC9470264 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1223] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2022] [Accepted: 08/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Generalist brood parasites that share nests with host nestlings can optimize resource acquisition from host parents by balancing the benefits that host nest-mates provide, including attracting increased provisions to the nest, against the costs of competing with the same host young over foster parental resources. However, it is unclear how parasitic chicks cope when faced with more nest-mates than are optimal for their survival upon hatching. We suggest that, in the obligate brood parasitic brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater), chicks use a niche construction strategy and reduce larger, more competitive host broods to maximize the parasites' survival to fledging. We experimentally altered brood sizes to test for Goldilocks principle patterns (i.e. a 'just right' intermediate brood size) of cowbird survival in nests of prothonotary warbler (Protonotaria citrea) hosts. We found that intermediate brood sizes of two host nestlings maximized cowbird fledging success relative to 0 or 4 host nest-mates at hatching. Specifically, cowbird nestlings lowered host brood sizes towards this optimum when placed in broods with more host nestlings. The results suggest that cowbirds reduce, but do not eliminate, host broods as a niche construction mechanism to improve their own probability of survival.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicholas D. Antonson
- Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
| | - Wendy M. Schelsky
- Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
- Illinois Natural History Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
| | - Deryk Tolman
- Helsinki Institute of Life Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | | | - Mark E. Hauber
- Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
- Illinois Natural History Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
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3
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Fortuna R, D'Amelio PB, Doutrelant C, Ferreira AC, Lecq C, Silva LR, Covas R, Rybak F, Paquet M. Begging and feeding responses vary with relatedness and sex of provisioners in a cooperative breeder. Anim Behav 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.12.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
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4
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Experimental evidence that nestlings adjust their fledging time to each other in a multiparous bird. Anim Behav 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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Obomsawin AP, Mastromonaco GF, Leonard ML. Chronic noise exposure has context-dependent effects on stress physiology in nestling Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Gen Comp Endocrinol 2021; 311:113834. [PMID: 34181934 DOI: 10.1016/j.ygcen.2021.113834] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2020] [Revised: 03/11/2021] [Accepted: 06/17/2021] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
Anthropogenic noise is increasing in intensity and scope, resulting in changes to acoustic landscapes and largely negative effects on a range of species. In birds, noise can mask acoustic signals used in a variety of communication systems, including parent-offspring communication. As a result, nestling birds raised in noise may have challenges soliciting food from parents and avoiding detection by predators. Given that passerine nestlings are confined to a nest and therefore cannot escape these challenges, noise may also act as a chronic stressor during their development. Here, we raised Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) nestlings with or without continuous, white noise to test whether noise exposure affected baseline and stress-induced plasma, integrated feather corticosterone levels, and immune function. Stress physiology and immune function may also vary with the competitive environment during development, so we also examined whether noise effects varied with brood size and nestling mass. We found that overall, exposure to noise did not alter nestling stress physiology or immune function. However, light nestlings raised in noise exhibited lower baseline plasma and integrated feather corticosterone than heavy nestlings, suggesting alternative physiological responses to anthropogenic stimuli. Furthermore, light nestlings in larger broods had reduced PHA-induced immune responses compared to heavy nestlings, and PHA-induced immune responses were associated with higher levels of baseline plasma and feather CORT. Overall, our findings suggest that noise can alter the stress physiology of developing birds; however, these effects may depend on developmental conditions and the presence of other environmental stressors, such as competition for resources. Our findings may help to explain why populations are not uniformly affected by noise.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anik P Obomsawin
- Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada.
| | | | - Marty L Leonard
- Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada
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6
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Brood sex ratio modulates the effects of extra food on parental effort and sibling competition in a sexually dimorphic raptor. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2021. [DOI: 10.1007/s00265-021-02970-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/16/2023]
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7
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Parental favoritism in a wild bird population. Anim Cogn 2021; 24:677-687. [PMID: 33398622 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-020-01463-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2020] [Revised: 12/09/2020] [Accepted: 12/16/2020] [Indexed: 01/14/2023]
Abstract
In most taxa with altricial young, offspring solicit food from their parents using a combination of visual and acoustic stimuli, but exactly what these young are communicating, and how selection shapes parental responses, remains unresolved. Theory posits that parents' interpretation and response to begging should vary with the likelihood of a return on their investment. We tested this in a wild population of prothonotary warblers (Protonotaria citrea), predicting that parents bias food non-randomly toward certain individuals within their broods depending on both the size and number of offspring. We observed parent-offspring interactions and detected strong dependence between brood size and nestling size in shaping parental responses to begging. Larger siblings were less likely to solicit food during feeding events than their smaller siblings, but they received a disproportionate share from parents in nests containing fewer-than-average young, whereas the smaller-than-average nestlings were disproportionately fed in broods containing a greater-than-average number of young. These findings suggest that parents respond to begging signals according to multiple social cues, favoring the stronger siblings with greater survival prospects when few copies of their genes are present, but overtly favoring runts to ensure whole-brood survival when capable of fledging more young. Future experimental studies may shed light on the contributions of parental decision-making and memory, how young nestlings learn in parent-offspring communication systems, and the adaptive significance of these behaviors.
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Wetzel DP, Mutzel A, Wright J, Dingemanse NJ. Novel sources of (co)variation in nestling begging behavior and hunger at different biological levels of analysis. Behav Ecol 2020. [DOI: 10.1093/beheco/araa042] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract
Biological hypotheses predicting patterns of offspring begging typically concern the covariance with hunger and/or development at specific hierarchical levels. For example, hunger drives within-individual patterns of begging, but begging also drives food intake among individuals within broods, and begging and food intake can covary positively or negatively among genotypes or broods. Testing biological phenomena that occur at multiple levels, therefore, requires the partitioning of covariance between traits of interest to ensure that each level-specific relationship is appropriately assessed. We performed a partial cross-fostering study on a wild population of great tits (Parus major), then used multivariate mixed models to partition variation and covariation in nestling begging effort and two metrics of nestling hunger within versus among individual nestlings and broods. At the within-individual level, we found that nestlings begged more intensely when hungrier (positive correlation between begging and hunger). However, among individuals, nestlings that were fed more frequently also begged more intensely on average (negative correlation between begging and hunger). Variation in nestling mass did not give rise to the negative correlation between begging and hunger among nestlings, but we did find that lighter nestlings begged more intensely than their heavier biological siblings, suggesting that this effect may be driven by a genetic component linked to offspring size. Our study illustrates how patterns of covariance can differ across biological levels of analysis and addresses biological mechanisms that could produce these previously obscured patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel P Wetzel
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
| | - Ariane Mutzel
- Research Group Evolutionary Ecology of Variation, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany
- Department of Behavioural Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany
| | - Jonathan Wright
- Center for Biodiversity Dynamics, Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Niels J Dingemanse
- Research Group Evolutionary Ecology of Variation, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany
- Behavioural Ecology, Department of Biology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany
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Bowers EK, Jenkins JB, Mueller AJ, Miller KD, Thompson CF, Sakaluk SK. Condition-Dependent Begging Elicits Increased Parental Investment in a Wild Bird Population. Am Nat 2019; 193:725-737. [PMID: 31002567 DOI: 10.1086/702848] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/02/2023]
Abstract
The coevolution of parental supply and offspring demand has long been thought to involve offspring need driving begging and parental care, leaving other hypotheses underexplored. In a population of wild birds, we experimentally tested whether begging serves as a negatively condition-dependent signal of need or a positively condition-dependent signal of quality. Across multiple years, we supplemented nestling house wrens with food shortly after hatching and simultaneously manipulated corticosterone levels to simulate the hunger-induced increase in glucocorticoids thought to mediate begging. This allowed us to also test whether begging is simply a proximate signal of hunger. Days after supplementation ended, food-supplemented nestlings were in better condition than nonsupplemented nestlings and begged for food at an increased rate; their parents, in turn, increased provisioning to a greater extent than parents of nonsupplemented young, as begging positively predicted provisioning. Food-supplemented nestlings therefore attained above-average condition, which predicted their recruitment as breeding adults in the local population. Glucocorticoids increased begging in the short term, but this transient effect depended on satiety. Thus, glucocorticoids promoted begging as a proximate response to hunger, whereas the longer-term changes in nestling condition, begging, and food provisioning suggest that begging ultimately signals offspring quality to elicit increased investment, thereby enhancing offspring survival.
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Enduring rules of care within pairs - how blue tit parents resume provisioning behaviour after experimental disturbance. Sci Rep 2019; 9:2776. [PMID: 30808890 PMCID: PMC6391394 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-39139-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2018] [Accepted: 01/18/2019] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
Sexual conflict over parental investment can result in suboptimal reproductive output. A recent hypothesis suggests that equality in investment, and hence conflict resolution, may be reached via coordination of parental activities like alternating nest visits. However, how robust patterns of care within couples are against temporal disturbances that create asymmetries in parental investment remains as yet to be shown. We here experimentally created such a social disturbance in a wild population of biparental blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) when provisioning their nestlings. We randomly caught and subsequently released one of the parents when nestlings were 6 and 12 days old respectively. On average, the parent that was caught did not resume care for nearly two hours. We then compared the levels of individual investment and within-pair coordination before, during and after the absence of the disturbed parent. We show that the remaining parent partially compensated by increasing its provisioning rate, but this compensatory response was strongest in females when nestlings were 6 days old. Once the caught parent returned to feed its nestlings, both parents resumed provisioning at a similar rate as before the disturbance. Likewise, the within-pair alternation level quickly resembled the pre-manipulated level, independent of nestling age or which sex was caught. Thus our experiment highlights the resilience of parental behaviour against temporal disturbances of individual parents.
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11
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Iserbyt A, Griffioen M, Borremans B, Eens M, Müller W. How to quantify animal activity from radio-frequency identification (RFID) recordings. Ecol Evol 2018; 8:10166-10174. [PMID: 30397456 PMCID: PMC6206221 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4491] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2018] [Revised: 07/19/2018] [Accepted: 07/27/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Automated animal monitoring via radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology allows efficient and extensive data sampling of individual activity levels and is therefore commonly used for ecological research. However, processing RFID data is still a largely unresolved problem, which potentially leads to inaccurate estimates for behavioral activity. One of the major challenges during data processing is to isolate independent behavioral actions from a set of superfluous, nonindependent detections. As a case study, individual blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) were simultaneously monitored during reproduction with both video recordings and RFID technology. We demonstrated how RFID data can be processed based on the time spent in- and outside a nest box. We then validated the number and timing of nest visits obtained from the processed RFID dataset by calibration against video recordings. The video observations revealed a limited overlap between the time spent in- and outside the nest box, with the least overlap at 23 s for both sexes. We then isolated exact arrival times from redundant RFID registrations by erasing all successive registrations within 23 s after the preceding registration. After aligning the processed RFID data with the corresponding video recordings, we observed a high accuracy in three behavioral estimates of parental care (individual nest visit rates, within-pair alternation and synchronization of nest visits). We provide a clear guideline for future studies that aim to implement RFID technology in their research. We argue that our suggested RFID data processing procedure improves the precision of behavioral estimates, despite some inevitable drawbacks inherent to the technology. Our method is useful, not only for other cavity breeding birds, but for a wide range of (in)vertebrate species that are large enough to be fitted with a tag and that regularly pass near or through a fixed antenna.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arne Iserbyt
- Behavioural Ecology and Ecophysiology GroupUniversity of AntwerpWilrijkBelgium
| | - Maaike Griffioen
- Behavioural Ecology and Ecophysiology GroupUniversity of AntwerpWilrijkBelgium
| | - Benny Borremans
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyUniversity of California Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
- Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and Statistical Bioinformatics (I‐BIOSTAT)Hasselt UniversityDiepenbeekBelgium
| | - Marcel Eens
- Behavioural Ecology and Ecophysiology GroupUniversity of AntwerpWilrijkBelgium
| | - Wendt Müller
- Behavioural Ecology and Ecophysiology GroupUniversity of AntwerpWilrijkBelgium
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