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We assessed whether adult House Sparrows Passer domesticus adjusted their provisioning in response to an experimental increase in the nutritional condition of their nestlings. When we supplemented chicks directly with additional food, male parents, but not female parents, reduced their provisioning. The results for males, but not females, run contrary to a previous experiment in this species. In addition,...
Social groups of the joint‐laying Pukeko Porphyrio porphyrio melanotus typically contain one or two breeding females. Male Pukeko mated to two females father more offspring and therefore benefit from this mating arrangement; however, primary females should not prefer this system, because fewer eggs hatch per female in the larger joint clutches. Here, we investigated male response to simulated egg...
In short‐lived species, parents are expected to favour their offspring and may therefore have to sacrifice the best part of their diet to feed their young (‘conflict hypothesis’). In addition, they need to maximize energy delivered per unit of time to the young (‘delivery hypothesis’). We examined the influence of these two factors on food allocation in Lincoln's Sparrows Melospiza lincolnii by measuring...
Dependent offspring influence allocation of parental investment using specialized traits thought to contain information about offspring condition. To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationship between one component of avian begging, the phenotype of the nestling mouth, and the density of a haematophagous mite, Pellonyssus reedi, in nestling House Sparrows Passer domesticus. Ectoparasite density...
One of the benefits of mate choice based on sexually selected traits is the greater investment of more ornamented individuals in parental care. The choosy individual can also adjust its parental investment to the sexual signals of its partner. Incubation is an important stage of avian reproduction, but the relationship between behaviour during incubation and mutual ornamentation is unclear. Studying...
In most passerine birds, individuals attempt to maximize their fitness by providing parental care while also mating outside their pair bond. A sex‐specific trade‐off between these two behaviours is predicted to occur, as the fitness benefits of extra‐pair mating differ between the sexes. We use nest observations and parentage analysis to reveal a negative association between male care and the incidence...
Birds exhibit a wide diversity of breeding strategies. During incubation or chick‐rearing, parental care can be either uniparental, by either the male or the female, or biparental. Understanding the selective pressures that drive these different strategies represents an exciting challenge for ecologists. In this context, assigning the type of parental care at the nest (e.g. biparental or uniparental...
The probability of Blue‐footed Booby Sula nebouxii fledglings becoming reproductive adults is maximal when one parent is old and the other young, and minimal when both are old or young. No mechanism has been identified to explain this pattern, but here we showed that nestlings with different‐aged parents are the least infested with ticks. This result constitutes preliminary confirmation of the hypothesis...
Most bird species exhibit biparental care, but the type of care provided by each sex may differ substantially. In particular, during the incubation phase in passerines, females perform most or all of the incubation, while the male cares for the brood indirectly by feeding the female. However, detailed descriptions of this male investment during the incubation period are missing. Here, we quantitatively...
Cooperative breeding is rare in shorebirds, and when found it is thought to be due to polygamous mating (cooperative polygamy). Here we describe the social structure of cooperatively breeding groups in Southern Lapwing Vanellus chilensis and test the prediction that offspring sex ratio is skewed towards the sex that helps. The social groups consisted of a breeding pair with one or two young (mostly...
Distraction displays are conspicuous behaviours functioning to distract a predator's attention away from the displayer's nest or young, thereby reducing the chance of offspring being discovered and predated. Distraction is one of the riskier parental care tactics, as its success derives from the displaying parent becoming the focus of a predator's attention. Such displays are prominent in birds, primarily...
Life‐history theory predicts that parents refer to the resources they hold to determine their breeding strategy. In multi‐brooded species, it is hypothesized that single‐brooded parents produce larger clutches and raise offspring with a brood survival strategy, whereas multi‐brooded parents only do this under good breeding conditions. Under poor conditions, they produce smaller clutches and raise...
Uniparental offspring desertion occurs in a wide variety of avian taxa and usually reflects sexual conflict over parental care. In many species, desertion yields immediate reproductive benefits for deserters if they can re‐mate and breed again during the same nesting season; in such cases desertion may be selectively advantageous even if it significantly reduces the fitness of the current brood. However,...
In birds, ambient temperature can influence adult incubation behaviour, energy budget, egg temperature and embryonic development, with downstream effects on offspring survival. Surprisingly, experimental manipulations of the whole nesting environment to test causes and consequences of variation in incubation pattern, energy balance, egg temperature and the duration of development are lacking to date...
The functions of display between breeding pairs of animals have been given little attention outside of sexual selection. Yet evidence suggests that display between partners is in fact most commonly observed following mate choice, and is often just as elaborate. In many bird species, allopreening, when one member of a pair preens the other, is a major component of display both pre‐ and post‐pair formation...
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