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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...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2016
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4858914 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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