Adjustments In Parental Care By The European Starling (Sturnus Vulgaris): The Effect Of Female Condition
نویسندگان
چکیده
Every organism has a limited amount of energy that can be expended towards growth, personal maintenance, and reproduction. Once an organism has reached sexual maturity, life history theory predicts a trade-off to exist between self-maintenance and investment in offspring. This study examined the extent to which male and female parental care was affected by a decrease in female body condition in a population of European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). By clipping wing and tail feathers on a female to reduce her foraging ability, female parental care was predicted to decrease, and male parental care to increase in compensation. Nests were observed during the 2002 breeding season. It was found that young raised at experimental nests fledged at significantly lower masses than those raised at control nests. This suggests that females compensated for their handicapped condition by decreasing reproductive energy expenditure, possibly by changing foraging strategy from prey of higher quality to prey of higher availability, combined with a slight decrease in feeding visits by both parents. Visitation rates by both parents at experimental nests tended to be slightly lower than those at control nests, though this difference was not statistically significant. Also, clipped females did not lose more body mass than control females during the reproductive season, indicating that females were not willing to pay the price for the increase in cost of reproduction.
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