Zebra finch nestlings, rather than parents, suffer from raising broods under low nutritional conditions

Krause, Eike; Krüger, Oliver; Pogány, Ákos

doi:10.1007/s00265-017-2382-5

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…In general, competition between parent and offspring for food during the period of parental care arises in species in which the offspring have the ability to forage by themselves (Kramer & Meunier, ) or in which there is an early onset of offspring self‐foraging. In altricial mammals and birds, the scope for parent–offspring competition is usually limited as the juveniles depend on the milk or other food supplied by the parents and the parents can control how much nutrition they wish to share (Krause et al ., ). In the presocial European earwig, post‐hatching parental care is not obligatory for offspring survival, as the nymphs can forage by themselves soon after hatching.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manipulation of parental nutritional condition reveals competition among family members

Keppner

Ayasse

Steiger

2018

J of Evolutionary Biology

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Parental care is thought to be costly, as it consumes time and energy. Such costs might be reduced in animal parents that raise their young on valuable food sources such as dung or carcasses, as parents are able to invest in self-maintenance by feeding from the same resource. However, this might lower the nutritional value for other family members and, as a consequence, food competition might arise. To promote our understanding of the outcome of such competition, we manipulated the necessity of parents to feed from the resource. Using a full factorial design, we paired food-deprived or well-fed males with food-deprived or well-fed females of burying beetles, which are known to raise their young on vertebrate cadavers. We found that food-deprived parents consumed more of the carrion than those that were well-fed and this had a negative impact on other family members. However, the outcome of the competition depended on the sex of the parents, with females suffering when males fed more and offspring suffering when females fed more. Thus, family life involves selfish elements, as both parents remove resources for the purpose of self-maintenance. However, females show altruistic aspects, as they appear to restrict their food consumption for the benefit of their offspring when paired with a food-deprived male. Interestingly, males extend their stay with the brood when having faced food scarcity prior to reproduction, presumably to replenish their energy reserves. Our study therefore reveals that breeding on shared resources can promote family living, but also results in competition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manipulation of parental nutritional condition reveals competition among family members

Keppner

Ayasse

Steiger

2018

J of Evolutionary Biology

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“…Thus, and although we could not test this in nuthatches, it is likely that the intensity of flank color expression in male nuthatches is correlated across their multiple plumage molts throughout their lifespans, and therefore females could obtain information on the conditions experienced during early life by assessing the flank color expression of their potential mates. As birds reared under stressful conditions that lead to poor body condition (Krause et al 2017) can exert a negative effect on the fitness of birds of subsequent generations (Naguib et al 2006), the tendency of female nuthatches to mate with males with lighter flank coloration may be adaptive, as they may potentially avoid mating with males that provide a negative effect on their offspring. These effects can be exerted through the heritability of epigenetic mechanisms that influence the expression of genes that regulate stress responses (Goerlich et al 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Females mate with males with diminished pheomelanin‐based coloration in the Eurasian nuthatch Sitta europaea

Galván

Rodríguez‐Martínez

2018

Journal of Avian Biology

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Sexual selection can drive the evolution of phenotypic traits because of female preferences for exaggerated trait expression in males. Sexual selection can also lead to the evolutionary loss of traits, a process to which female preferences for diminished male trait expression are hypothesized to contribute. However, empirical evidence of female preferences for diminished male traits is virtually lacking. Eurasian nuthatches Sitta europaea provide an opportunity to test this possibility, as a chestnut flank patch produced by the pigment pheomelanin is present since the first plumage of these birds and its color is more intense in nestlings in poor condition in our study population. It has been proposed that developing birds in poor condition may increase their production of pheomelanin as a detoxifying strategy. Female nuthatches may thus prefer mating with males showing flank feathers of diminished color, as this could indicate that males experienced good conditions early in development, which can positively affect the fitness of future generations. Here we show results according with this prediction in a wild population of Eurasian nuthatches, as adult males with lighter chestnut feathers paired earlier in the season, while chestnut coloration had no effect on female mating success. Chestnut color expression was not affected by the body condition of birds, suggesting that females obtain information on the body condition in early life of their potential mates and not on their current body condition. This constitutes one of the few examples of females mating with males showing diminished traits and provides the only explanation so far by which this process can occur.

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“…In zebra finches, both males and females are involved in parental care at considerable cost (Vleck 1981;Zann 1996). Some studies showed that body mass (Krause et al 2017) and immunocompetence (Deerenberg et al 1997) decrease during parental care, while metabolic rate increases (Vleck 1981).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zebra finch song parameters are affected by the breeding status of the male and the ambient temperature conditions

Maëlle,

Rutkowska

2024

Preprint

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Bird song is a crucial feature for mate choice and reproduction. Song is known to communicate information related to the quality of the mate, through song complexity, structure or finer changes in syllable characteristics. It has been shown in zebra finches that those characteristics can be affected by various factors including motivation, hormone levels or extreme temperature. However, although the literature on zebra finch song is substantial, some factors have been neglected. In this paper, we recorded male zebra finches in two breeding contexts (before and after pairing) and in two ambient temperature conditions (stable and variable) to see how those factors could influence song production. We found strong differences between the two breeding contexts: compared to their song before pairing, males that were paired had lower song rate, syllable consistency, frequency and entropy, while surprisingly the amplitude of their syllables increased. Temperature variability had an impact on the extent of these differences, but did not directly affect the song parameters that we measured. Our results describe for the first time how breeding status and temperature variability can affect zebra finch song, and give some new insights into the subtleties of the acoustic communication of this model species.

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Zebra finch nestlings, rather than parents, suffer from raising broods under low nutritional conditions

Cited by 12 publications

References 71 publications

Manipulation of parental nutritional condition reveals competition among family members

Manipulation of parental nutritional condition reveals competition among family members

Females mate with males with diminished pheomelanin‐based coloration in the Eurasian nuthatch Sitta europaea

Zebra finch song parameters are affected by the breeding status of the male and the ambient temperature conditions

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