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Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?

BACKGROUND: Black sparrowhawks (Accipiter melanoleucus) recently colonised the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, where the species faces competition for their nest sites from Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) which frequently usurp black sparrowhawk nests. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that...

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Autores principales: Sumasgutner, Petra, Millán, Juan, Curtis, Odette, Koelsag, Ann, Amar, Arjun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858914/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27150363
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0671-7
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author Sumasgutner, Petra
Millán, Juan
Curtis, Odette
Koelsag, Ann
Amar, Arjun
author_facet Sumasgutner, Petra
Millán, Juan
Curtis, Odette
Koelsag, Ann
Amar, Arjun
author_sort Sumasgutner, Petra
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Black sparrowhawks (Accipiter melanoleucus) recently colonised the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, where the species faces competition for their nest sites from Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) which frequently usurp black sparrowhawk nests. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that multiple nest building by black sparrowhawks is a strategy to cope with this competitor, based on a 14-year long term data set. RESULTS: Two main results support the hypothesis: first, the numbers of intact nests per breeding season in black sparrowhawk territories increased as levels of geese interactions increased, specifically when usurpation occurred. Usurpation occurred significantly more often at nests later in the season, and may provide a further explanation for the advancement of the black sparrowhawk breeding season towards earlier breeding attempts which results in an overall extension of the breeding period (over 9 months) that has been found in our study population. Second, nest usurpation had a negative impact on black sparrowhawks’ reproductive performance at the ‘nest’ level, but not at the ‘territory’ level when multiple nests were available within the same breeding season, suggesting that this strategy was effective for dealing with this competitor. However, our results do not rule out long term negative consequences of these interactions, for example, reduced adult survival rates or reduced lifetime reproductive success, due to the higher energy demand required to build several nests each breeding season. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that black sparrowhawks avoid direct conflict with this large and aggressive competitor and instead choose the passive strategy in allocating more resources to multiple nest building. Our research further highlights the importance of behavioural plasticity, which might be especially important for city-dwelling species in the face of global urbanisation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0671-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-48589142016-05-07 Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation? Sumasgutner, Petra Millán, Juan Curtis, Odette Koelsag, Ann Amar, Arjun BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Black sparrowhawks (Accipiter melanoleucus) recently colonised the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, where the species faces competition for their nest sites from Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) which frequently usurp black sparrowhawk nests. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that multiple nest building by black sparrowhawks is a strategy to cope with this competitor, based on a 14-year long term data set. RESULTS: Two main results support the hypothesis: first, the numbers of intact nests per breeding season in black sparrowhawk territories increased as levels of geese interactions increased, specifically when usurpation occurred. Usurpation occurred significantly more often at nests later in the season, and may provide a further explanation for the advancement of the black sparrowhawk breeding season towards earlier breeding attempts which results in an overall extension of the breeding period (over 9 months) that has been found in our study population. Second, nest usurpation had a negative impact on black sparrowhawks’ reproductive performance at the ‘nest’ level, but not at the ‘territory’ level when multiple nests were available within the same breeding season, suggesting that this strategy was effective for dealing with this competitor. However, our results do not rule out long term negative consequences of these interactions, for example, reduced adult survival rates or reduced lifetime reproductive success, due to the higher energy demand required to build several nests each breeding season. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that black sparrowhawks avoid direct conflict with this large and aggressive competitor and instead choose the passive strategy in allocating more resources to multiple nest building. Our research further highlights the importance of behavioural plasticity, which might be especially important for city-dwelling species in the face of global urbanisation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0671-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4858914/ /pubmed/27150363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0671-7 Text en © Sumasgutner et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sumasgutner, Petra
Millán, Juan
Curtis, Odette
Koelsag, Ann
Amar, Arjun
Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
title Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
title_full Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
title_fullStr Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
title_full_unstemmed Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
title_short Is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
title_sort is multiple nest building an adequate strategy to cope with inter-species nest usurpation?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858914/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27150363
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0671-7
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