Abstract
Birds exposed to food insecurity—defined as temporally variable access to food—respond adaptively by storing more energy. To do this, they may reduce energy allocation to other functions such as somatic maintenance and repair. To investigate this trade-off, we exposed juvenile European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris, n = 69) to 19 weeks of either uninterrupted food availability or a regime where food was unpredictably unavailable for a 5-h period on 5 days each week. Our measures of energy storage were mass and fat scores. Our measures of somatic maintenance were the growth rate of a plucked feather, and erythrocyte telomere length (TL), measured by analysis of the terminal restriction fragment. The insecure birds were heavier than the controls, by an amount that varied over time. They also had higher fat scores. We found no evidence that they consumed more food overall, though our food consumption data were incomplete. Plucked feathers regrew more slowly in the insecure birds. TL was reduced in the insecure birds, specifically, in the longer percentiles of the within-individual TL distribution. We conclude that increased energy storage in response to food insecurity is achieved at the expense of investment in somatic maintenance and repair.
Highlights
Birds exposed to food insecurity—defined as temporally variable access to food—respond adaptively by storing more energy
When birds such as starlings are exposed to food insecurity—defined as temporally variable access to food—they respond by storing fat and gaining body mass [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Fat scores at week 19 were significantly higher for the insecure group than the control group
Summary
Birds exposed to food insecurity—defined as temporally variable access to food—respond adaptively by storing more energy. We conclude that increased energy storage in response to food insecurity is achieved at the expense of investment in somatic maintenance and repair When birds such as starlings are exposed to food insecurity—defined as temporally variable access to food—they respond by storing fat and gaining body mass [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Wiersma & Verhulst [24] found that zebra finches whose foraging costs were increased regrew a plucked tail feather more slowly than control birds Another possible marker of somatic maintenance is telomere length (TL). We predicted body fat and mass would increase, while the rate of feather regrowth and TL would decrease, under food insecurity compared to the control treatment
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