Prey choice, provisioning behaviour, and effects of early nutrition on nestling phenotype of titmice

García‐Navas, Vicente; Ferrer, Esperanza S.; Sanz, Juan José

doi:10.2980/20-1-3545

Cited by 40 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…) that may also function as a growth factor linked to bone growth (Ramsay & Houston , García‐Navas et al . , see also Pagani‐Núnez & Senar ). Thus, females may seek to accelerate the development of junior nestlings by providing them with spiders.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Experimental evidence for parental, but not parentally biased, favouritism in relation to offspring size inBlueTitsCyanistes caeruleus

García‐Navas

Ferrer

Serrano‐Davies

2014

Ibis

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In species with biparental care, males and females share the benefits of investing in offspring but pay the costs individually. As a result of these evolutionary conflicts of interest between the sexes, it is expected that the two parents should follow different behavioural rules when providing food to the young. Such a discrepancy may be accentuated when parents have to choose between different subsets of offspring (e.g. large and small nestlings). We manipulated the degree of hatching asynchrony in Blue Tits Cyanistes caeruleus and quantified male and female feeding behaviour when nestlings were 7 and 10 days old. First, we tested for a difference in the role of the sexes during the nestling rearing period between experimentally asynchronous and synchronous control broods. We then used experimentally asynchronous broods to assess differences between the sexes in the pattern of food distribution in terms of number of feedings and prey types, between junior and senior siblings. When nestlings in experimental nests were 7 days old, females fed young more often than did males despite facing a trade‐off between brooding the smallest nestlings and bringing food to the nest. At this age, there was also a skew in food delivery in favour of senior siblings, whereas food was more evenly distributed across the brood when nestlings were 10 days old. We found no difference in how male and female Blue Tits distributed feeding visits among junior and senior nestlings. However, females fed the smallest nestlings with more spiders in comparison with their senior siblings. This could be related to their more suitable size relative to other prey types, their high content of essential nutrients, or both, and may represent a more cryptic form of parentally biased favouritism. We compare these findings with previous work on other species and discuss why parents did not feed junior siblings more frequently.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Experimental evidence for parental, but not parentally biased, favouritism in relation to offspring size inBlueTitsCyanistes caeruleus

García‐Navas

Ferrer

Serrano‐Davies

2014

Ibis

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“…Over a 15‐day nestling period, these parents would have approximately 864 000 s of total foraging time. Great tit parents can make approximately 13 provisioning trips per hour, so a parent can return to the nest with prey, such as caterpillars, approximately every 138 s, on average (García‐Navas et al ., ). If the smallest offspring are at a high risk of starvation, parents will be selected to feed the offspring in the best condition (Mock & Parker, ; Davis et al ., ; Caro et al ., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The efficiency benefit (b) of responding to a low cost signal could be relatively high in birds such as the great tit, because: (i) they nest in dark tree holes, where it may be relatively hard to assess cues such as body size (Wiebe & Slagsvold, 2012); (ii) they frequently experience brood reduction, so slight increases in provisioning rate could have especially large impacts on the fitness of marginal offspring (Bengtsson & Ryd en, 1983); and (iii) their breeding period is constrained to the relatively short window when caterpillars are abundant, and so efficiency in distributing food could be important (Hinks et al, 2015). Great tit parents can spend an average of 8 h per day foraging for their brood (Barba et al, 2009;Garc ıa-Navas et al, 2013). Over a 15-day nestling period, these parents would have approximately 864 000 s of total foraging time.…”

Section: Empirical Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signalling of information that is neither cryptic nor private

Wild

West

2017

J of Evolutionary Biology

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It is commonly assumed that in order for animal signals to be advantageous, the information being signalled could not have been obtained otherwise, and is therefore 'cryptic' or 'private'. Here, we suggest a scenario in which individuals can gain an advantage by signalling 'public' information that is neither cryptic nor private. In that scenario, signalling increases the efficiency with which that 'public' information is transmitted. We formalize our idea with a game in which offspring can signal their condition to their parents. Specifically, we consider a resource-strapped parent who can only invest in one of its two offspring, and we allow offspring the chance to influence parental investment through a signal. A parent in the game seeks to invest in the higher-quality offspring, which it could identify either through a publicly available cue, such as body size, or by relying on a signal provided by the offspring. We find that if the signal can convey information about offspring quality more efficiently than cues, then signalling of condition between offspring and parents can be favoured by selection, even though parents could potentially have acquired the same information from the cue. Our results suggest that the biological function of signals may be broader than currently considered, and provide a scenario where low cost signalling can be favoured. More generally, efficiency benefits could explain signalling across a range of biological and economic scenarios.

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“…This apparently striking result, however, could probably be expected. In the last decade, many researchers have reported the positive effect of spider intake on nestling fitness, mainly as the result of their high content of aminoacids such as taurine (Ramsay & Houston, 2003;Magrath et al, 2004;Arnold et al, 2007;Wiesenborn, 2012;García-Navas, Ferrer & Sanz, 2013;Pagani-Núñez & Senar, 2014). The underlying mechanism driving this correlation, however, is not yet clear.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat structure and prey composition generate contrasting effects on carotenoid-based coloration of great titParus majornestlings

Pagani‐Núñez

Uribe

Hernández-Gómez

et al. 2014

Biol J Linn Soc Lond

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Carotenoid-based coloration of nestling plumage is generally considered a reliable signal of quality and has consistently been related to habitat structure. The main hypothesis proposed to explain this correlation is that high quality habitats contain high quality food, which in return affects the expression of carotenoid-based plumage. It therefore assumes that, at the population level, the link between habitat structure and food composition is consistent and more relevant than inter-individual differences in foraging ability or parental investment. In addition, it is assumed by default that food and habitat produce concordant effects on nestling coloration. In this work we evaluated habitat structure and prey composition in addition to several measures of parental investment. We investigated their relative effect on carotenoid-based plumage coloration (lightness, chroma and hue) of great tit Parus major nestlings. We found a low correlation between carotenoid-based coloration of nestlings and that of their parents. Nestling coloration, especially lightness and chroma, increased with the intake of more spiders. The time of breeding was positively correlated with lightness and chroma and negatively correlated with hue. Finally, the maturity of oak trees surrounding nest-boxes correlated negatively with lightness, and the size of all tree species surrounding nest-boxes correlated positively with hue of chick plumage. Our findings support the view that habitat structure and prey composition may produce divergent effects on feather pigmentation, and that prey proportions and variables related to parental investment should be assessed when considering carotenoid-based coloration of chicks.

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Prey choice, provisioning behaviour, and effects of early nutrition on nestling phenotype of titmice

Cited by 40 publications

References 57 publications

Experimental evidence for parental, but not parentally biased, favouritism in relation to offspring size inBlueTitsCyanistes caeruleus

Experimental evidence for parental, but not parentally biased, favouritism in relation to offspring size inBlueTitsCyanistes caeruleus

Signalling of information that is neither cryptic nor private

Habitat structure and prey composition generate contrasting effects on carotenoid-based coloration of great titParus majornestlings

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