Find research datasets worth reusing

Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.

datasets available to search

ShareScore release 0.9.0

Dataset results

36 results for “begging”

Learn how ShareScore rates datasets ↗

dryad28/100

Data from: Offspring beg more towards larger females in a burying beetle

Offspring of many animals beg for food from parents. Begging is often costly, and offspring should seek to reduce such costs to maximise their returns on begging. Whenever multiple adults provide care for a joint brood, as in species where multiple females breed communally, offspring should beg towards the parent that provisions the most food. Here, we investigate whether larvae spend more time begging towards larger females in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. Prior work on this species shows that larger females provision more food than smaller ones, suggesting that larvae would benefit by preferentially begging towards larger females. To test for such a preference, we provided experimental broods with a simultaneous choice between two dead females: a smaller and a larger one. Larvae spent more time begging towards larger females. We next examined the behavioural mechanism for why larvae begged towards larger females. Larvae spent more time in close contact with larger females over smaller ones, whilst there was no evidence that larvae begged more when in close contact with larger females. Thus, larvae begged more towards the larger female simply as a consequence of spending more time close to larger females. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of parent-offspring communication by showing that offspring can choose between parents based on parental attributes, such as body size, reflecting how much food parents are likely to provision.

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

dryad28/100

Calling in the face of danger: do nestling Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) suppress begging in response to predator playbacks?

Nest predation is the most frequent cause of nest failure in birds such as the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) that nest on or near the substrate. Nestlings should therefore exhibit adaptations to reduce the risk of nest predation. We tested the nestling antipredator hypothesis by examining the begging responses of Red-winged Blackbird nestlings to vocalizations of: (1) an important nest predator (American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos), (2) a predator that rarely preys on nestlings (Cooper's Hawk, Accipiter cooperii), and (3) a nonpredator (Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus). We performed playbacks with: (1) both parents present at the nest, (2) male at the nest, and (3) neither parent present. Following playback, we measured duration of nestling begging after the parent departed (begging persistence), bouts of otherwise normal begging when no parent was present (parent-absent begging), and calling without postural components of begging (nonpostural begging). When the male or both parents were present during playback, adults responded with alarm calls and nestlings significantly reduced parent-absent begging following American Crow and Cooper's Hawk playbacks. Nonpostural begging was significantly reduced following Cooper's Hawk playback, but there were no significant differences in the other begging variables. When neither parent was present, we found no significant differences in nonpostural begging in response to the three playback types, but parent-absent begging was significantly reduced following American Crow and Cooper's Hawk playbacks when compared to Northern Flicker playbacks. These results show that nestlings suppress their vocal begging in response to calls of predators including Cooper's Hawks even though they are not common nest predators.

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →

dryad28/100

Data from: Host provisioning behavior favors mimetic begging calls in a brood-parasitic cowbird

The vocalizations of some young brood-parasitic birds closely resemble those of their host's young. Such similarities might arise because hosts bestow the greatest parental care in response to their own species' call type. We used a playback experiment to assess the effectiveness of the nestling call structures of two brood parasites, the specialist screaming cowbird (Molothrus rufoaxillaris) and the generalist shiny cowbird (M. bonariensis), in stimulating parental provisioning in a shared host, the baywing (Agelaioides badius). Screaming cowbird begging calls closely resemble those of baywing young and thus should best exploit any bias for species-specific cues. Shiny cowbird calls, in contrast, are unlike baywings but can instead exploit non-specific sensory biases for long call duration and syllable repetition. We found playback of screaming cowbird's mimetic calls elicited increases in feeding rates equivalent to those of playback of the host's own young, while shiny cowbird calls failed to increase provisioning rates above those of no-broadcast control sessions. These results indicate that baywings discriminate between nestling call structures in favour of their own species calls when adjusting parental investment, and support the view that selection for optimal host provisioning can favour vocal mimicry by parasitic offspring.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

dryad28/100

Data from: Do parasites and antioxidant availability affect begging behaviour, growth rate and resistance to oxidative stress?

Early-life trade-offs faced by developing offspring can have long-term consequences for their future fitness. Young offspring use begging displays to solicit resources from their parents and have been selected to grow fast to maximize survival. However, growth and begging behaviour are generally traded-off against self-maintenance. Oxidative stress, a physiological mediator of life-history trade-offs, may play a major role in this trade-off by constraining, or being costly to, growth and begging behaviour. Yet, despite implications for the evolution of life-history strategies and parent-offspring conflicts, the interplay between growth, begging behaviour and resistance to oxidative stress remains to be investigated. We experimentally challenged wild great tit (Parus major) offspring by infesting nests with a common ectoparasite, the hen flea (Ceratophyllus gallinae), and simultaneously tested for compensating effects of increased vitamin E availability, a common dietary antioxidant. We further quantified the experimental treatment effects on offspring growth, begging intensity and oxidative stress. Flea-infested nestlings of both sexes showed reduced body mass during the first half of the nestling phase but this effect vanished short before fledging. Begging intensity and oxidative stress of both sexes were unaffected by both experimental treatments. Feeding rates were not affected by the experimental treatments but parents of flea-infested nests fed nestlings with a higher proportion of caterpillars, the main source of antioxidants. Additionally, female nestlings begged significantly less than males in control nests, while both sexes begged at similar rates in vitamin E supplemented nests. Our study shows that a parasite exposure does not necessarily affect oxidative stress levels or begging intensity, but suggests that parents can compensate for negative effects of parasitism by modifying food composition. Furthermore, our results indicate that the begging capacity of the less competitive sex is constrained by antioxidant availability.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

dryad28/100

Data from: Species divergence in offspring begging and parental provisioning is linked to nutritional dependency

In animal species in which parents provide food to their dependent young, offspring often display conspicuous begging signals. These solicitation behaviors are important components of parent–offspring communication, but it is currently unclear how they and the parental response covary with offspring dependency on parental food provisioning across species. Burying beetles (Nicrophorus) are well known for providing elaborate biparental care, including provisioning of begging larvae. By using a multispecies approach, we show that larval begging intensity, as well as the time parents spend provisioning, differ greatly between individuals of the 3 species: N. orbicollis, N. pustulatus, and N. vespilloides. Our results demonstrate that the most dependent offspring of N. orbicollis invest the most time in begging, whereas the most independent offspring of N. pustulatus invest the least amount of time in begging. Thus, we suggest that begging intensity differs due to intrinsic differences in nutritional need between the species rather than because of an arbitrary divergence in begging behavior. We further show that in all 3 species, females spend significantly more time provisioning than males, although there is considerable divergence between species in the extent to which females and males contribute to the provisioning of larvae. We discuss the potential selective factors leading to this diversification of offspring begging and parental provisioning in relation to the distinct variation in offspring dependence between the 3 species.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

dryad28/100