Risk-Taking in Bluebirds After Exposure to a Nest Predator Relates to Parental Roles and Shows Little Cooperation Between Partners
Date
2024-11-27
Authors
Wiebe, Karen
Tkaczyk, Simon P.
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Ethology: International Journal of Behavioural Biology
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Abstract
Parents may experience a trade-off between caring for offspring and protecting themselves from predators. The reproductive value hypothesis predicts that parents should take more risks for older, more valuable, offspring whereas the harm to offspring hypothesis predicts that parents should risk more for vulnerable offspring that would suffer most from a lack of parental care at the moment. After exposing parent mountain bluebirds (Sialis currucoides) to a model predator, we recorded latency times for them to touch, to look into, and to enter their nestbox and the number of times they inspected the box across three breeding stages: nest-building, incubation and nestling-rearing. Females took greater risks than males during the nest-building and incubation stages by inspecting and entering boxes sooner and more times, consistent with their role in parental care at those early breeding stages that requires them to enter the box. Risk-taking in males was consistent with the reproductive value hypothesis, increasing across breeding stages. In contrast, females took the greatest risk during incubation, consistent with the harm to offspring hypothesis. Furthermore, latency to look into the box was not correlated between pair members and both sexes assumed the risk to first inspect the nestbox approximately equally. This suggests there is not a "war of attrition" between mates over risk-taking but neither was there cooperation by the male to facilitate the rapid resumption of parental care by his mate. The results highlight that patterns of investment in nest defense in birds may be sex-specific.
Description
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Wiebe, K.L. & Tkacyzk, S.P. (2024). Risk-Taking in Bluebirds After Exposure to a Nest Predator Relates to Parental Roles and Shows Little Cooperation Between Partners. Ethology. https://doi.org/10.1111/eth.13531 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/eth.13531. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Keywords
passerine, parental care, predation risk, sex roles, Sialis currucoides, nest defense
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/eth.13531