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Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards

Previous studies of interference competition have shown an asymmetric effect on intake rate of foragers on clumped resources, with only subordinate individuals suffering. However, the food distributions in these studies were uniform or highly clumped, whereas in many field situations, food aggregati...

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Autores principales: Gyimesi, Abel, van Rooij, Erica P., Nolet, Bart A.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer-Verlag 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952768/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976292
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-1001-5
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author Gyimesi, Abel
van Rooij, Erica P.
Nolet, Bart A.
author_facet Gyimesi, Abel
van Rooij, Erica P.
Nolet, Bart A.
author_sort Gyimesi, Abel
collection PubMed
description Previous studies of interference competition have shown an asymmetric effect on intake rate of foragers on clumped resources, with only subordinate individuals suffering. However, the food distributions in these studies were uniform or highly clumped, whereas in many field situations, food aggregation is intermediate. Here we investigated whether food distribution (i.e., uniform, slightly clumped, and highly clumped) affects the behavioral response of mallards foraging alone or competing with another. Although the amount of food was the same in all distributions, the mallards reached higher intake rates, visited fewer patches, and showed longer average feeding times in the highly clumped distribution. Competing mallards had lower intake rates on the slightly clumped than on the uniform or highly clumped food distributions. Subordinates generally visited more patches and had shorter feeding times per patch, but their intake rates were not significantly lower than those of dominants. Therefore, we propose that subordinates do not necessarily suffer from interference competition in terms of intake rate, but do suffer higher search costs. In addition, although dominants had significantly higher average feeding times on the best quality patches of the highly clumped food distribution, such an effect was not found in the slightly clumped distribution. These findings indicate that in environments where food is aggregated to a lesser extent, monopolization is not the best strategy for dominants. Our results suggest that interference experiments should use food distributions that resemble the natural situation animals are faced with in the field.
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spelling pubmed-29527682010-10-21 Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards Gyimesi, Abel van Rooij, Erica P. Nolet, Bart A. Behav Ecol Sociobiol Original Paper Previous studies of interference competition have shown an asymmetric effect on intake rate of foragers on clumped resources, with only subordinate individuals suffering. However, the food distributions in these studies were uniform or highly clumped, whereas in many field situations, food aggregation is intermediate. Here we investigated whether food distribution (i.e., uniform, slightly clumped, and highly clumped) affects the behavioral response of mallards foraging alone or competing with another. Although the amount of food was the same in all distributions, the mallards reached higher intake rates, visited fewer patches, and showed longer average feeding times in the highly clumped distribution. Competing mallards had lower intake rates on the slightly clumped than on the uniform or highly clumped food distributions. Subordinates generally visited more patches and had shorter feeding times per patch, but their intake rates were not significantly lower than those of dominants. Therefore, we propose that subordinates do not necessarily suffer from interference competition in terms of intake rate, but do suffer higher search costs. In addition, although dominants had significantly higher average feeding times on the best quality patches of the highly clumped food distribution, such an effect was not found in the slightly clumped distribution. These findings indicate that in environments where food is aggregated to a lesser extent, monopolization is not the best strategy for dominants. Our results suggest that interference experiments should use food distributions that resemble the natural situation animals are faced with in the field. Springer-Verlag 2010-06-30 2010 /pmc/articles/PMC2952768/ /pubmed/20976292 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-1001-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2010 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Gyimesi, Abel
van Rooij, Erica P.
Nolet, Bart A.
Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
title Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
title_full Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
title_fullStr Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
title_full_unstemmed Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
title_short Nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
title_sort nonlinear effects of food aggregation on interference competition in mallards
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952768/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976292
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-1001-5
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