In a songbird, the black redstart, parents use acoustic cues to discriminate between their different fledglings

Abstract

Several studies on parental investment in territorial songbirds have reported the existence of brood division. This is a type of postfledging care in which each parent has long-term feeding preferences for different young within a brood, creating two family units. Recent theoretical work indicates that conflicts between individuals should select for brood division. However, little is known about the mechanisms involved in the onset and maintenance of this behavioural strategy. Given the high rate of fledglings' begging calls, we hypothesized that acoustic discrimination could explain the stability of feeding preferences at a proximate level. In a 3-year field study, we recorded the responses of parent black redstarts, Phoenicurus ochruros, a territorial songbird, to playback of the begging calls of fledglings fed by the male and by the female. Parents responded more to the calls of the fledglings that they preferentially fed. A principal component analysis of the calls suggested that parents may recognize individual offspring. To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence that a bird can acoustically discriminate between two categories of its own offspring: those that it preferentially feeds and those fed by the other parent.