No evidence of extra-pair paternity or intraspecific brood parasitism in the Imperial Shag Phalacrocorax atriceps

Abstract

In long-lived birds with significant paternal care contribution, as the case of seabirds, extra-pair paternity (EPP) is an infrequent phenomenon. Intriguingly, and in contrast to the general pattern exhibited by seabirds, EPP rates appear relatively high in the two species of cormorants and shags (Phalacrocoracidae family) analyzed so far. We test for EPP in the Imperial Shag Phalacrocorax atriceps, a medium-sized colonial seabird, using four DNA microsatellites originally developed for Great Cormorants P. carbo, and successfully cross-amplified in our focal species. We assessed the parentage of 110 chicks from 37 broods sampled at Punta Leon, Argentina, during the 2004 and 2005 breeding seasons. We found no evidence of EPP or intraspecific brood parasitism (IBP). Given our sample sizes, the upper 95% confidence limits for both EPP and IBP were estimated at 3.3% for the chicks and 8.4% for the broods. Our results did not agree with the previous reports of EPP within the family, probably as consequence of different copulation and courtship behaviours, mostly related to male’s solicitation display and females active search for extra pair copulations.