Egg Data Slips: Are They Useful for Information on Egg-Laying Dates and Clutch Size?

McNair, Douglas B.

doi:10.2307/1368490

Cited by 18 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In both approaches, the common goal is to characterize the nesting period with respect to egg production, and estimated dates of first eggs are similar under either scenario (nest collectors were essentially ‘monitoring’ the nests they collected to collect complete clutches whenever possible). In the literature, data from early egg collectors have been considered biased towards sampling earlier lay dates; however, other research has argued this is not the case (McNair, 1985, 1987). If our historic estimates are biased, the historic initial lay dates used in our analyses are biased towards earlier dates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clutch initiation dates for both museum and contemporary egg and nest records were calculated with standard protocols. For museum records, we estimated the initial lay date by subtracting the clutch size from the date of clutch collection, following methods described by McNair (1987). For contemporary nests, either the date the first egg was laid was observed directly, or we back-calculated the first egg-laying date by adjusting for stage of nest development (incubation, hatching, brooding and fledging).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate change affects bird nesting phenology: Comparing contemporary field and historical museum nesting records

Bates

Fidino

Nowak‐Boyd

et al. 2022

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Global climate change impacts species and ecosystems in potentially harmful ways. For migratory bird species, earlier spring warm‐up could lead to a mismatch between nesting activities and food availability. CO2 provides a useful proxy for temperature and an environmental indicator of climate change when temperature data are not available for an entire time series. Our objectives were to (a) examine nesting phenology over time; (b) determine how nesting phenology relates to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration; and (c) demonstrate the usefulness of historical museum collections combined with modern observations for trend analyses. We assessed changes in nesting dates of 72 bird species in the Upper Midwest of the United States by comparing contemporary lay dates with those obtained from archived, historical museum nest records over a 143‐year period (1872–2015). Species‐specific changes in lay date per one unit change in the CO2 residual ranged from −0.75 (95% CI: −1.57 to −0.10) to 0.45 (95% CI: −0.29 to 1.43). Overall, lay dates advanced ~10 days over the 143‐year period. Resident, short‐distance migrants and long‐distance migrants lay dates advanced by ~15, 18 and 16 days on average respectively. Twenty‐four species (33.3%) significantly advanced, one (1.4%) significantly delayed and we failed to detect an advance or delay in lay date for 47 species (65.3%). Overall mean advance in first lay date (for the species that have significantly advanced laying date) was 25.1 days (min: 10.7, max: 49.9). Our study highlights the scientific importance of both data gathering and archiving through time to understand phenological change. The detailed archived information reported by egg collectors provide the early data of our study. As with studies of egg‐shell thinning and pesticide exposure, our use of these data illustrates another scientific utility of egg collections that these pioneer naturalists never imagined. As museums archive historical data, these locations are also ideal candidates to store contemporary field data as it is collected. Together, such information will provide the ability to track, understand and perhaps predict responses to human‐driven environmental change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change affects bird nesting phenology: Comparing contemporary field and historical museum nesting records

Bates

Fidino

Nowak‐Boyd

et al. 2022

Journal of Animal Ecology

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“…Another possible source of bias in recording breeding phenology is that different aspects of the breeding cycle may be reported. Thus, some studies report laying dates (laying of first eggs in the nest) whereas others report egg dates (dates on which viable eggs were found; McNair 1987, Peck and James 1987), and these may result in breeding periods with different start and length. To see whether this affected our phenology variables, we used the original dataset with 496 records (with a median of three records per species) to compare data originating from laying dates and egg dates.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breeding phenology determines evolutionary transitions in migratory behaviour in finches and allies

Tökölyi

Barta

2010

Oikos

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The breeding season of longdistance migratory birds often starts later and is shorter than in resident or shortdistance species breeding at the same latitude, but the reason for this is unclear. Here we investigate the association between migration distance and breeding phenology in a group of passerine birds, the finches and their allies, using phylogenetic comparative methods. We confirm that migration distance is related to aspects of the species' breeding phenology after controlling for the effect of potentially confounding variables. Directional phylogenetic analyses suggest that evolutionary transitions in migration distance are determined by the breeding phenology. A relatively long migration distance is more likely to evolve in birds with a late, short breeding season, whereas transitions to short distance migration are more likely to occur in lineages with an early, long breeding season. These results suggest that migration distance is constrained by breeding phenology and not vice versa. Thus, breeding phenology may be an important ultimate factor shaping the evolution of migratory strategies.

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“…Museum egg collections clearly have a valuable role in scientific research, but some studies have recommended they be used with caution due to the potential effects of collection bias (Lack , Väisänen , Koenig , McNair , Mallory et al , Starling et al , Birkhead and Montgomerie ), something that has also been noted in other types of natural history collections (Cooper et al ). Although some eggs in museum collections were collected in a random (or at least haphazard) manner, such as those sampled during scientific expeditions, many were collected by individual collectors either for a hobby or to sell.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Museum egg collections are typically accompanied with data cards, so it is sometimes possible to use this information to remove samples with obvious abnormalities, mistaken/mismatched data information and/or clearly biased collection motives (McNair ). However, data cards are not always available and, even if they are, do not always contain the information necessary for informed sample exclusion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Avian egg collections: museum collection bias driven by shape and size

Thompson

Birkhead

2020

Journal of Avian Biology

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Avian eggs exhibit substantial intra‐ and interspecific variation in shape, size and colour. Considerable efforts have been made to better understand the evolutionary drivers behind such variation, often using museum egg collections. Usually it is assumed that museum collections accurately represent the variation seen in natural populations, but this may not be the case if there is collection bias. Collection bias may lead to the over‐representation of certain egg traits in collections, due to the aesthetic (or other) preferences of collectors. The aim of this study is to begin to look for the occurrence of potential collection bias in museum egg collections by comparing three shape indices (pointedness/asymmetry, elongation and polar asymmetry) and egg volume between subsets of eggs in museum collections with those of recently sampled eggs in the field for three different bird species: common guillemot Uria aalge, razorbill Alca torda and northern fulmar Fulmarus glacialis. We found no evidence of collection bias in our sampled razorbill and northern fulmar museum collection eggs, but some evidence for a bias in sampled museum collection eggs of common guillemots. Since the guillemot's egg differs from most bird eggs in being pyriform, we suggest that collection bias by historic egg collectors may be more prevalent in species with extreme egg traits. Researchers using museum egg collections to examine questions relating to egg shape should be aware of collection bias risks and consider how to minimise the effect of these possible biases on accumulated datasets.

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Egg Data Slips: Are They Useful for Information on Egg-Laying Dates and Clutch Size?

Cited by 18 publications

References 28 publications

Climate change affects bird nesting phenology: Comparing contemporary field and historical museum nesting records

Climate change affects bird nesting phenology: Comparing contemporary field and historical museum nesting records

Breeding phenology determines evolutionary transitions in migratory behaviour in finches and allies

Avian egg collections: museum collection bias driven by shape and size

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