Abstract
Many environmental and behavioral factors can affect offspring survival, and these factors can vary by species. Parental investments, defense or distraction displays, and translocation can potentially affect survival of young. Alterations in parental investment strategies may carry implications for population growth due to lower offspring survival in translocated bobwhites. We hypothesized that translocation would not impact brood defense behaviors in bobwhites as predator communities may be similar between donor sites (Florida) and release sites (North Carolina). However, we hypothesized that brood defense behaviors affect offspring survival rates. We conducted defense behavior observations by approaching brood‐rearing bobwhites and recording exhibited behaviors, and assigned scores based on behavioral intensity. We used the corral capture method and modified‐suture technique to capture and radio‐tag bobwhite chicks. Brood defense behaviors did not differ between resident and translocated bobwhites. We observed seven different brood defense behaviors: fly away, run, labored flight, labored flight with broken wing display, run with broken wing display, hold tight and approach behaviors. We found that time‐varying precipitation and behavioral intensity affected bobwhite chick survival. These results indicate that translocation does not impact brood defense behaviors due to behavioral similarities between resident and translocated cohorts. These results portend that some variation in annual chick mortality cannot be mitigated by habitat management. We also provide evidence that translocation does not alter/suppress important behavioral patterns in bobwhite, indicating it is a viable method for restoring bobwhite populations in conjunction with habitat management.
Highlights
Parental investment is the allocation of resources to behaviors that increase chances of offspring survival, while possibly lowering its own survival and future reproductive opportunities (Trivers 1972, 1974)
We observed a plethora of brood defense behaviors that are consistent with the precocial bird literature
Our results indicate that brood defense behaviors and environmental conditions influence chick survival before fledging from adults
Summary
Parental investment is the allocation of resources to behaviors that increase chances of offspring survival, while possibly lowering its own survival and future reproductive opportunities (Trivers 1972, 1974). Protect offspring during predator encounters and increase predation risk to themselves or to evade predators and increase their own survival (Andersson et al 1980, Lima and Dill 1990) These behaviors may carry implications for population dynamics because individual heterogeneity in survival and reproduction can explain population level variations in demography (Gangloff et al 2018). Brood defense behaviors are intended to decrease the likelihood of chick mortality and increase one’s fitness (GreigSmith 1980, Blancher and Robertson 1982, Wiklund 1990) These behaviors are intended to momentarily increase conspicuousness to themselves by diverting the predators’ focus away from vulnerable offspring and onto the adult(s) (Armstrong 1954, Watson and Jenkins 1964). High mortality rates (Burger et al 1995a, Cox et al 2004, Terhune et al 2007) jeopardize future reproductive opportunity and may encourage allocation of parental defense to current offspring
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