Evidence For Individual Consistency and Location Effects On Nest Morphology In A Population of Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The behaviors of animals can be highly variable across individuals and environments; however, recent studies have demonstrated that the behaviors of individuals in response to similar environmental stimuli are often highly consistent over time. We investigated consistency in nest building behaviors during a single breeding season in a population of Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia) in southeastern Ontario, Canada. We examined the first and second nests constructed by eight individually-marked females that were distributed among three breeding locations 1–3 km apart, to test whether individual female and location affected the similarity of nests using three methods. First, we compared morphological measures of nests among females and locations and found that nests built by the same female were more similar in their nest depth compared with nests built by different females. Second, we used human observers to rank nest similarity based on overall nest appearance (considering morphology and compos...