The level of water in the river flowing through the breeding site shapes the body condition of a lekking bird\u2014the Great Snipe Gallinago media

Marta Witkowska,Pavel Pinchuk,Natalia Karlionova,Włodzimierz Meissner,Zuzanna Marynkiewicz

doi:10.1007/s10336-022-01966-5

Marta Witkowska, Pavel Pinchuk + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-022-01966-5

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Abstract

The display of lekking Great Snipe males is an energetically demanding activity and therefore, access to the rich feeding sites in the proximity of their leks is essential. During the breeding season, Great Snipes mostly prey on earthworms, whose availability is affected by moisture and penetrability of the soil. In this study, we investigated the relation between the body condition of displaying Great Snipe males and the water level of the river flowing through their breeding grounds, which can affect soil characteristics. We found that the body condition of males decreased over the course of the lekking period in May, showing the great energetic expenditure of their advertising display in courtship. The high water level in the river resulted in the increase in body condition of birds, probably due to improved prey availability, as earthworms moved closer to the ground surface in search of optimal conditions. Further rise in the water level caused flooding of the meadow and a decrease in the body condition of lekking Great Snipes, possibly because of the deterioration of feeding condition, as earthworms tend to leave flooded areas. Moreover, as the flooded area enlarged, the floodplain became inaccessible for foraging Great Snipes, due to their relatively short legs restricting them from wading in deep water. Our results show that for the lowland leks of the Great Snipe to be preserved it is advisable to allow for the natural water level fluctuations in the river shaping the hydrological conditions of the floodplains.

Highlights

The lekking behaviour is relatively rare among species, yet it is present in a great number of taxa, e.g., insects, amphibians, mammals and birds (Höglund and Alatalo 1995; Fiske et al 1998)
We found the decrease in the body mass of lekking males of Great Snipe over the breeding season according to Generalized Linear Model, with insignificant influence of a year as a cofactor (GLM, Wald’s statistics = 14.75, p = 0.01; Fig. 1)
Among all variables incorporated into the proposed models, the date of the capture of an individual in the season had no significant influence on the body mass according to all nine computed Generalized Additive Models (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

The lekking behaviour is relatively rare among species, yet it is present in a great number of taxa, e.g., insects, amphibians, mammals and birds (Höglund and Alatalo 1995; Fiske et al 1998). The evolutionary rule is that females rely on the condition-dependent traits as indicators of the general quality of a mate, in terms of the mating performance and other biological aspects. This allows for an indirect increase in the fitness of the female, as traits of a high-quality male may be inherited by a female’s offspring (Höglund and Alatalo 1995; Ryder et al 2010)

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