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14 results for “eastern bluebird”
Data from: Genomic data reveal unexpected relatedness between a brown female Eastern bluebird and her brood
<p>Because plumage coloration is frequently involved in sexual selection, for both male and female mate choice, birds with aberrant plumage should have fewer mating opportunities and thus lower reproductive output. Here we report an Eastern Bluebird (<em>Sialia sialis</em>) female with a brown phenotype that raised a brood of four chicks to fledging. The brown female and her mate were only related to their social offspring to the second degree and one of the offspring was a half-sibling. We propose four family tree scenarios and discuss their implications (e.g., extra-pair paternity, conspecific brood parasitism), but regardless of the tree, the brown female was able to find a mate, which may have been facilitated by the bottleneck created by the severe snowstorms in February 2021.</p>
Data from: Genomic data reveal unexpected relatedness between a brown female Eastern bluebird and her brood
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Effects of supplemental feeding on nesting success and physiological metrics in Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis)
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Data from: Nature versus nurture: Structural equation modeling indicates that parental care does not mitigate consequences of poor environmental conditions in Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis)
<p>1. How organisms respond to variation in environmental conditions and whether behavioral responses can mitigate negative consequences on growth, condition and other fitness measures are critical to our ability to conserve populations in changing environments. Offspring development is affected by environmental conditions and parental care behavior. When adverse environmental conditions are present, parents may alter behaviors to mitigate the impacts of poor environmental conditions on offspring.</p> <p>2. We determined if parental behavior (provisioning rates, attentiveness, nest temperature) varied in relation to environmental conditions (e.g., food availability, ectoparasites) and if parental behavior mitigated negative consequences of the environment on their offspring in Eastern bluebirds (<i>Sialia sialis</i>).</p> <p>3. We found that offspring on territories with lower food availability had higher hematocrit, and when bird blow flies (<i>Protocalliphora</i> spp.) were present growth rates were reduced. Parents increased provisioning and nest attendance in response to increased food availability but did not alter behavior in response to parasitism by blow flies. While parents altered behavior in response to resource availability, parents were unable to override the direct effects of negative environmental conditions on offspring growth and hematocrit.</p> <p>4. Our work highlights the importance of the environment on offspring development and suggests that parents may not be able to sufficiently alter behavior to ameliorate challenging environmental conditions.</p>
Large-scale supplemental feeding alters lay date and nest survival in Eastern Bluebirds but not in two species of chickadees
<p>Wild bird feeding is a popular and growing activity, with approximately half of households participating in nations including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Supplemental feeding can increase survival and reproductive success of birds (which is often a goal of supplemental feeding efforts), but it raises concerns about phenological mismatch, reduced clutch size, or increased risk of nest predation. Our objectives were to test whether access to supplemental food during the breeding season was correlated with (1) advanced egg-laying phenology, (2) increased clutch size, or (3) improved nest survival of 3 cavity-nesting species (Carolina Chickadee, <i>Poecile carolinensis</i>; Black-capped Chickadee, <i>P. atricapillus</i>; and<i> </i>Eastern Bluebird, <i>Sialia</i> <i>sialis</i>) at a large spatial scale (United States and Canada; 22 degrees latitude difference and 55 degrees longitude difference). We examined data from 24,528 nest attempts submitted to NestWatch from 2014–2019. For Eastern Bluebirds, birds with access to supplemental insects initiated clutches 5.83 (± 0.89 SE) days earlier than birds without access to food subsidies, while predicted nest survival was 5% greater for birds with access to supplemental insects (probability of nest success = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.77–0.81) when compared to birds without (0.74, 95% CI = 0.72–0.75). Clutch size of Eastern Bluebirds did not differ between birds with and without access to supplemental insects. For chickadees, supplemental feeding (of seeds, suet, insects, or fruit) was not correlated with phenology, clutch size, or nest survival. <span>Our results suggest that supplemental feeding of insects can be an effective tool for increasing nest survival in Eastern Bluebirds and potentially other food-limited insectivores. However, the efficacy of supplemental feeding for improving reproductive success varies across <a>taxa</a></span><span>. </span>Our results can help elucidate how wild bird feeding contributes to global phenomena such as earlier nesting, nest survival, and population <a>change</a>.</p>
Data from: Nature versus nurture: Structural equation modeling indicates that parental care does not mitigate consequences of poor environmental conditions in Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis)
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Large-scale supplemental feeding alters lay date and nest survival in Eastern Bluebirds but not in two species of chickadees
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Data from: Relationship between maternal environment and DNA methylation patterns of estrogen receptor alpha in wild Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) nestlings: a pilot study
There is mounting evidence that, across taxa, females breeding in competitive environments tend to allocate more testosterone to their offspring prenatally and these offspring typically have more aggressive and faster-growing phenotypes. To date, no study has determined the mechanisms mediating this maternal effect's influence on offspring phenotype. However, levels of estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) gene expression are linked to differences in early growth and aggression; thus, maternal hormones may alter gene regulation, perhaps via DNA methylation, of ERα in offspring during prenatal development. We performed a pilot study to examine natural variation in testosterone allocation to offspring through egg yolks in wild Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) in varying breeding densities and percent DNA methylation of CG dinucleotides in the ERα promoter in offspring brain regions associated with growth and behavior. We hypothesized that breeding density would be positively correlated with yolk testosterone, and prenatal exposure to maternal-derived yolk testosterone would be associated with greater offspring growth and decreased ERα promoter methylation. Yolk testosterone concentration was positively correlated with breeding density, nestling growth rate, and percent DNA methylation of one out of five investigated CpG sites (site 3) in the diencephalon ERα promoter, but none in the telencephalon (n = 10). Percent DNA methylation of diencephalon CpG site 3 was positively correlated with growth rate. These data suggest a possible role for epigenetics in mediating the effects of the maternal environment on offspring phenotype. Experimentally examining this mechanism with a larger sample size in future studies may help elucidate a prominent way in which animals respond to their environment. Further, by determining the mechanisms that mediate maternal effects, we can begin to understand the potential for the heritability of these mechanisms and the impact that maternal effects are capable of producing at an evolutionary scale.
Data from: Relationship between maternal environment and DNA methylation patterns of estrogen receptor alpha in wild Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) nestlings: a pilot study
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Eastern bluebird and tree swallow response to noise from natural gas compressor stations
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Data from: Why do females sing? Pair communication and other song functions in eastern bluebirds.
Female bird song has been underappreciated and understudied, especially in temperate species. Birdsong was originally thought to be a trait used primarily by male songbirds for mate attraction and male/male contest. However, ornithologists have long known that females sing in many tropical songbirds, often for similar functions to male song. Yet studies of female song in temperate regions remain scarce. Increasing our understanding of the function of female song in temperate species is a powerful step towards discerning the selective pressures that maintain elaborate female signals. In the last few decades, studies of temperate species have highlighted five major functional categories of female song. Using a modelling framework, based on all known functions of song in other species, we tested the function of female song in eastern bluebirds. The modelling framework allowed us to test the effect of multiple complex behaviors simultaneously to predict female song function. Additionally, modelling mitigated issues of multiple testing across the five different functional categories. We found that female song in eastern bluebirds is primarily used in pair communication. Specifically, females sing to strengthen and maintain long-term pair bonds. Strengthening pair-bonds may be advantageous for eastern bluebirds as pairs that remain together between nesting attempts and between years have higher reproductive success. We demonstrate a clear link between the function of female song in pair communication and the likely selective force of long-term pair bonds acting on eastern bluebird reproductive success. Additionally, our study highlights a major function of female song in a temperate species.
Data from: Why do females sing? Pair communication and other song functions in eastern bluebirds.
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Data from: Model egg rejection by Eastern Bluebirds
<p class="MsoCommentText">Brood parasitism results in substantial costs to hosts, yet not all species eject foreign eggs. Because the costs of mistakenly ejecting one's own eggs are high, selection may favor ejection behavior only if it is unlikely a host will incorrectly eject her own eggs. Eastern Bluebirds are currently subject to relatively low levels of interspecific brood parasitism but still sometimes eject parasitic eggs. Therefore, we tested which visual cues they use to eject foreign eggs with the prediction that only the most dissimilar eggs would be ejected, reducing the likelihood of a female's making a mistake. House Sparrows, which occasionally parasitize bluebirds, lay eggs that have an off-white ground color with brown speckling. Therefore, to test which colors or patterns allow for discrimination of parasitic eggs, we generated 3D-printed model House Sparrow eggs and painted them entirely off-white, entirely brown, half off-white and half brown, or off-white with brown speckling. We then sequentially placed these four different model eggs in the nests of Eastern Bluebirds, with each nest receiving all treatments over the course of four days. After watching females enter and leave the nest box just one time after placement of the model egg, we found that speckled eggs were ejected half the time (7 of 14 nests), while no other treatment was ejected more than three times. Thus, Eastern Bluebird females eject eggs based primarily on color patterning (i.e., a speckled pattern) rather than coloration <i>per se</i>, and that they can do so very quickly, as the average female had removed the model egg within six minutes of entering the nest. Because Eastern Bluebirds do not lay speckled eggs, but some brood parasites (e.g., House Sparrows, Brown-headed Cowbirds) do, selection may specifically favor ejection of eggs with a speckled pattern, not just eggs that have within-egg color contrasts.</p>
Data from: Model egg rejection by Eastern Bluebirds
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