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36 results for “Brood size”
Datasets and R code for: Brood as booty: The effect of colony size and resource value in social insect contests
<p><strong>From the Manuscript: </strong>Animals engage in contests for access to resources like food, mates, and space. Intergroup contests between groups of organisms have received little attention, and it remains unresolved what information groups might use collectively to make contest decisions. We staged whole-colony contests using ant colonies (<em>Temnothorax rugatulus</em>), which perceive conspecific colonies as both a threat and resource from which to steal brood. We recorded individual behaviors and used demographic characteristics as proxies for resource value (number of brood items) and fighting ability (number of workers). We found that ants altered their fighting effort depending on the relative number of workers of their opponent. While the proximate mechanism for this ability remains uncertain, we found that colonies increased fighting when their opponent had relatively more brood, but not if opposing colonies had relatively many more workers. This suggests that ant colonies can use information about opposing colonies that shapes contest strategies. Further, the behavior of opposing colonies were strongly correlated with each other despite colony size differences ranging from 4-51%, consistent with the hypothesis that colonies can use opponent information. The behavior of a distributed, collective system of many individuals, like a eusocial insect colony, thus fits several predictions of contest models designed for individuals if we consider the gain and loss of worker ants analogous to energetic costs accrued during typical dyadic contests.</p>
Using metabolic data to investigate the role of brood size in the development of endothermy
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Datasets and R code for: Brood as booty: The effect of colony size and resource value in social insect contests
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Data from: Parasites favor intermediate nestling masses and brood sizes in cliff swallows
A challenge of life-history theory is to explain why animal body size does not continue to increase, given various advantages of larger size. In birds, body size of nestlings and the number of nestlings produced (brood size) have occasionally been shown to be constrained by higher predation on larger nestlings and those from larger broods. Parasites also are known to have strong effects on life-history traits in birds, but whether parasitism can be a driver for stabilizing selection on nestling body size or brood size is unknown. We studied patterns of first-year survival in cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) in western Nebraska in relation to brood size and nestling body mass in nests under natural conditions and in those in which hematophagous ectoparasites had been removed by fumigation. Birds from parasitized nests showed highest first-year survival at the most common, intermediate brood-size and nestling-mass categories, but cliff swallows from non-parasitized nests had highest survival at the heaviest nestling masses and no relationship with brood size. A survival analysis suggested stabilizing selection on brood size and nestling mass in the presence (but not in the absence) of parasites. Parasites apparently favor intermediate offspring size and number in cliff swallows and produce the observed distributions of these traits, although the mechanisms are unclear. Our results emphasize the importance of parasites in life-history evolution.
Data from: Parental overproduction allows siblicidal bird to adjust brood size to climate-driven prey variation
<p>Parental overproduction is hypothesized to hedge against uncertainty over food availability and stochastic death of offspring and to improve brood fitness. Understanding the evolution of overproduction requires quantifying its benefits to parents across a wide range of ecological conditions, which has rarely been done. Using a multiple hypotheses approach and 30 years of data, we evaluated the benefits of overproduction in the Blue-footed booby, a seabird that lays up to three eggs asynchronously, resulting in an aggressive brood hierarchy that facilitates the death of last-hatched chicks under low food abundance. Results support the resource-tracking hypothesis, as low prey abundance (estimated from sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a concentration) led to rapid brood reduction. The insurance hypothesis was supported in broods of three, where last-hatched chicks' survival increased after a sibling's death. Conversely, in broods of two, results suggested that parents abandoned last-hatched chicks following first-hatched chicks' deaths. No direct evidence supported the facilitation hypothesis: the presence of a last-hatched chick during development did not enhance its sibling's fitness in the short or long term. The value of last-hatched offspring to parents, as "extra" or "insurance" varied with indices of food abundance, brood size, and parental age. Ninety percent of overproduction benefits came from enabling parents to capitalize on favorable conditions by fledging additional offspring. Our study provides insight into the forces driving overproduction, explaining the adaptiveness of this apparently wasteful behavior and allowing us to better predict how overproduction's benefits might be modified by ocean warming.</p>
Data from: Brood size, food availability, and body size affects male care decisions and offspring performance
<p>Parental care strategies do not only vary greatly across species, but also within species, there can be substantial between- and within-individual variation in parental care behaviour. To better understand the evolution of care strategies, it is crucial to determine how and when parents modify their behaviour in response to internal as well as environmental factors. Here, we investigated the effect of brood size, resource size and an individual's quality on care strategies of uniparental males and examined the downstream consequences on offspring performance in the burying beetle <em>Nicrophorus vespilloides</em>. Burying beetles breed on small vertebrate cadavers and, on average, males invest much less in care than females. Nevertheless, we found that uniparentally caring males were responsive to their social and non-social environment and adjusted the amount as well as the type of care to the size of the brood, the size of the cadaver and their own body size. Additionally, we show that the care strategies affected offspring performance. Specifically, males that cared longer had larger and more surviving larvae. Our results add to our understanding of plastic parenting strategies by showing that even the sex that provides less care can evolve a very flexible care behaviour.</p>
Data from: Experimental manipulation of polyandry in a marine gastropod reveals how the number of mates affects reproductive output, offspring size, and the distribution of paternity within broods
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Experimentally increased brood size accelerates actuarial senescence and increases subsequent reproductive effort in a wild bird population
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Data from: Experimental manipulation of brood size affects several levels of phenotypic variance in offspring and parent pied flycatchers
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Data from: Brood size affects future reproduction in a long-lived bird with precocial young
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Data from: Brood size, food availability, and body size affects male care decisions and offspring performance
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Data from: Parasites favor intermediate nestling masses and brood sizes in cliff swallows
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Parental effort in warming young: A neglected component of life history strategies influenced by nest structure, brood size, body mass, and bi-parental care
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Data from: Parental overproduction allows siblicidal bird to adjust brood size to climate-driven prey variation
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Data from: Parental genetic similarity and offspring performance in blue tits in relation to brood size manipulation
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Data from: Benefits of an anti-parasite treatment are influenced by within-brood size variation in Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor)
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Data from: Condition-dependent expression of carotenoid- and melanin-based plumage colour of northern flicker nestlings revealed by manipulation of brood size
Carotenoid-based colouration in feathers is widely accepted to be a reliable signal of the health of an individual, but the condition-dependence of melanin-based plumage ornaments has been highly debated. Using broods that were manipulated in size, we tested whether nutritional stress during rearing affected the carotenoid pigmentation in secondary feathers and the size, shape, and symmetry of melanin spots on breast plumage of northern flicker Colaptes auratus nestlings. Two measures of carotenoid colour (chroma and brightness) of secondary flight feathers did not vary according to brood size treatment, but in a larger dataset from the population, carotenoid chroma was positively associated with nestling mass. Nestlings from experimentally enlarged broods had smaller melanin spots than those from reduced broods, which is some of the first experimental evidence that melanin ornament size in growing nestlings is condition-dependent. However, the shape and symmetry of the melanin breast spots was not associated with nestling mass. Sexual dimorphism was apparent in both types of pigmentation and future studies should investigate whether there are any trade-offs for nestlings between investing in carotenoid colouration and melanisation and whether trade-offs differ between the sexes.
Data from: Trade-offs in parasitism efficiency and brood size mediate parasitoid coexistence, with implications for biological control of the invasive emerald ash borer
1. Parasitoids often are selected for use as biological control agents because of their high host specificity, yet such host specificity can result in strong interspecific competition. Few studies have examined whether and how various extrinsic factors (such as parasitism efficiency, i.e. the ability to optimize host-finding attack rates) influence the outcome of competition between parasitoids, even though they could have profound effects on the implementation of classical biological control programmes. 2. To determine the potential influence of extrinsic competition and coexistence on host suppression efficacy, we compared parasitism by two larval parasitoids (Tetrastichus planipennisi and Spathius galinae) of the invasive emerald ash borer (EAB) Agrilus planipennis, under different host densities, parasitoid densities, host plant sizes and parasitoid–host ratios. 3. Spathius galinae had significantly higher parasitism efficiency (≈4 times), but significantly lower brood size (>6 times) than that of T. planipennisi. The attack rates of hosts increased significantly with parasitoid density, whereas host density did not significantly affect multiparasitism. The parasitism rate of T. planipennisi on small host logs was significantly higher than that on large logs, while host plant (log) size had no significant impact on S. galinae parasitism. 4. The multiparasitism rate was rather low regardless of host log size and parasitoid/host density, indicating that intrinsic competition between the two species of parasitoids might seldom occur in the field. The two species of parasitoids could therefore coexist in the same habitat, and any adverse effects on the suppression of EAB populations caused by competitive behaviour between the two species of parasitoids would likely be negligible. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our findings suggest that introducing multiple species of parasitic natural enemies could be feasible for management of invasive species, but it is important to examine multiple extrinsic factors simultaneously when evaluating interspecific competition between them. Among these different extrinsic factors, we found that coexistence between parasitoids can be mediated by trade-offs in their parasitism efficiency and brood sizes. Thus, the differences in life-history traits of natural enemies could be used to select among biological control agents being considered for releases.
Data from: The evolution of clutch size in hosts of avian brood parasites
Coevolution with avian brood parasites shapes a range of traits in their hosts, including morphology, behavior, and breeding systems. Here we explore whether brood parasitism is also associated with the evolution of host clutch size. Several studies have proposed that hosts of highly virulent parasites could decrease the costs of parasitism by evolving a smaller clutch size, because hosts with smaller clutches will lose fewer progeny when their clutch is parasitized. We describe a model of the evolution of clutch size, which challenges this logic and shows instead that an increase in clutch size (or no change) should evolve in hosts. We test this prediction using a broad-scale comparative analysis to ask whether there are differences in clutch size within hosts and between hosts and nonhosts. Consistent with our model, this analysis revealed that host species do not have smaller clutches and that hosts that incur larger costs from raising a parasite lay larger clutches. We suggest that brood parasitism might be an influential factor in clutch-size evolution and could potentially select for the evolution of larger clutches in host species.
Data from: Brood size matching: a novel perspective on predator dilution
A primary benefit of grouping is diluting the individual risk of attack by predators. However, the fact that groups are formed not always by solitary adults but also by subgroups (e.g., families) has been overlooked. The subgroup-specific benefit of predator dilution depends on its relative contribution to total group size. Therefore, the willingness of a subgroup to merge with others should increase the less it contributes to total group size, but the conflicting preferences of partners may result in the preferential merger of similar-sized subgroups. Here, we evaluate how the proportional contribution of subgroups to diluting risk affects group formation. We generate predictions using a bidding game over parental care and test them using data on common eiders (Somateria mollissima), in which females with variable-sized broods may form brood-rearing coalitions. The predictions (1) that size-matched subgroups should have a higher propensity to merge, (2) that predation should increase group formation propensity, and (3) that increased bargaining power, as proxied by female body condition, should increase the time needed to establish partnerships were all supported. Partners do negotiate over their relative contributions to predator dilution, accepting or rejecting partnerships on the basis of this criterion. Our results show that consideration of the size of subgroups before merger is critical in understanding the process of group formation under the threat of predation.
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