Pollutants affect development in nestling starlings Sturnus vulgaris

Pollutants affect development in nestling starlings Sturnus vulgaris

Shape from shading in starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).

Birds behave as if they quickly and accurately perceive an object-filled visual world. Beyond the extensive research with pigeons, however, there is a large and important gap in our knowledge about the mechanisms of object perception and recognition in other avian visual systems. The pattern of shading reflected from the surfaces of objects is one important optical feature that provides fundame...

Heritability of nestling growth in cross-fostered European Starlings Sturnus vulgaris.

In altricial birds, growth rates and nestling morphology vary between broods. For natural selection to produce evolutionary change in these variables, ther must exist heritable variation. Since nestling traits are not any longer presents in parents, traditional offspring-parent regressions cannot estimate heritabilities of these. In this study, a partial cross-fostering experiment was performed...

Body Mass, Composition, and Survival of Nestling and Fledgling Starlings (sturnus Vulgaris) at Belmont, New Zealand

Earlier studies of the starling (Sturnus vulgaris) population at Belmont, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, showed that nest productivity was low compared with other populations in New Zealand and elsewhere. Therefore, we investigated possible trade-offs between offspring number and quality (as measured by body mass and composition). We also compared these measures of offspring condition with preand pos...

Repeatability of Clutch Size in Female Starlings (sturnus Vulgaris)

Theories of clutch size determination have focused on first broods or on seasonal trends in clutch size. Clutch size is controlled by combination of genetic, ontological and environmental factors (KENNEDY & WHITE, 1991). In recent years, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated the existence of significant repeatability in ecologically important traits in natural bird populations (e.g....