Parental concern about children's traffic safety in residential neighborhoods

One hundred and five parents and nonparents responded to a questionnaire consisting of evaluative ratings (general evaluation, social status and safety concern) of six familiar residential neighborhoods; ratings of the traffic accident risk children in the age ranges 2–4, 5–6, 7–9 and 10–12 years run in these neighborhoods; and, finally, ratings of the strengths attributed to factors as causes of traffic accidents (environment, children, parents, drivers and chance). Across neighborhoods and age ranges of children, risk perceptions were found to be related to the rated strengths of the causes. Low-traffic volume neighborhoods were perceived as less risky and were attributed as less strong causes than high-traffic volume neighborhoods were. Perceived risk increased with age of child to a maximum, then decreased. The same relationship with age was found for the attributed causes environment and drivers. The strength of parents as cause was rated to decrease while the strength of child as cause was rated to increase with age. Chance was rated as the weakest cause and the rated strength did not vary across neighborhoods or age. Neither parentship nor gender, singly or in combination, had any clear effects. For parents and nonparents alike the general evaluation of the neighborhoods was influenced by safety concern but not by the particular aspect investigated, i.e. perceived traffic accident risk to children.     

Female nutritional state affects the rate of male incubation feeding in the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca

Summary Male pied flycatches Ficedula hypoleuca regularly feed their mates during incubation. By experimentally supplying some females with extra food we studied how the female's nutritional state affected her incubation schedule and the rate at which her mate fed her. Females that received extra food spent more time on the nest and shorter periods away from it, compared with control females. This suggests that nest attentiveness is governed by the amount of energy available to the female. When females reccived extra food, males decreased their rate of incubation feeding. They also did so in response to increasing ambient temperatures, whereas incubation schedules were unaffected. We, therefore, conclude that our results support the female nutrition hypothesis, i.e., that the food provided by the male constitutes a significant nutritional contribution to the incubating female.