Abstract
Abstract: Breeding biology in a population of Rufous-collared Sparrow (Zonotrichia capensis, Statius Müller, 1776) at different elevations in the Tropical Andes. Elevation strongly influences the evolution of life history traits associated with bird physiology and reproduction. Since life history traits in birds are modulated by environmental factors that vary with elevation, we expected to find changes in breeding biology traits of Z. capensis at different elevations. In this study, we compared the breeding biology (clutch size, egg volume, and reproductive activity) of a non-migratory population of Z. capensis in two localities at different elevations (low and high elevations, 1 800 m a.s.l., and 3 800 m a.s.l., respectively) and same latitude in the Colombian Tropical Andes for a one-year period. We found no differences in clutch size between the localities; however, egg volume was higher at high elevation. Furthermore, the reproductive activity differed significantly between localities. We propose that clutch size is likely conserved throughout the altitudinal distribution of Z. capensis since the species evolved in Tropical lowlands. On the other hand, the larger egg volume at high elevation could obey local environmental factors that may favor the reproductive success of the population.
Highlights
Understanding how life history traits are modeled by natural selection is one of the main questions in evolutionary ecology (Endler 1995)
Since life history traits in birds are modulated by environmental factors that vary with elevation, we expected to find changes in the breeding biology traits of Z. capensis at different elevations
We found a statistically significant difference in mean egg volume between elevations, indicating that larger eggs were found at high elevation compared to smaller eggs at low elevation (Table 1)
Summary
Understanding how life history traits are modeled by natural selection is one of the main questions in evolutionary ecology (Endler 1995). Changes in environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, atmospheric pressure, precipitation, and seasonality) that occur in response to variations in elevation and/or latitude have been related to life history evolution (Cody 1996, Boyce 1979, Endler 1986, Badyaev 1997a, Foster & Endler 1999, Quirici et al 2014). The relationship between variation in bird reproductive life history traits, such as clutch or egg size, and elevation remains unclear. In Tropical regions, there is insufficient information on how clutch size or egg volume responds to different elevations at the population level (Boyle et al 2016), or on other reproductive life history traits
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