Parental favouritism strategies in the asynchronously hatching European Roller (<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Coracias garrulus</Emphasis>) |
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Authors: | Jesús M Avilés Deseada Parejo Juan Rodríguez |
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Institution: | 1.Departamento de Ecología Funcional y Evolutiva,Estación Experimental de Zonas áridas (C.S.I.C.),Almería,Spain |
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Abstract: | In altricial birds, resource allocation during early developmental stages is the result of an interaction between parental
feeding decisions and scramble competition between nestmates. Hatching asynchrony in birds leads to a pronounced age hierarchy
among their offspring. Therefore, whenever parents exert control over resource allocation parents feeding asynchronous broods
should simultaneously assess individual offspring internal condition and age. In this study, we first studied whether the
highly ultraviolet (UV) reflective body skin of nestlings in the asynchronous European Roller (Coracias garrulus; roller hereafter) relates to nestling quality. In a second stage, we experimentally studied parental biases in food allocation
towards senior and junior sibling rollers in relation to a manipulation of UV reflectance of the skin of their offspring.
Heavier roller nestlings had less brilliant and less UV saturated skins than weaker nestlings. In our experiment, we found
that parents with large broods preferentially fed nestlings presenting skin coloration revealing small body size (i.e. control
nestlings) over nestlings presenting skin coloration revealing large body size (i.e. UV-blocked nestlings). Within the brood,
we found that parental food allocation strategy depended on nestling age: parents preferentially fed senior nestlings signalling
small body size, but did not show preference between control and UV-blocked junior nestlings. These results emphasise that
parent rollers use UV cues of offspring quality while balancing the age of their offspring to adjust their feeding strategies,
and suggest that parents may adopt finely tuned strategies of control over resource allocation in asynchronous broods. |
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