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Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species

Breeding mistiming is increasingly frequent in several ecosystems in the face of current climate change. Species belonging to higher trophic levels must employ mechanisms to reduce it. One of these mechanisms is hatching asynchrony, with the eggs in a clutch hatching over a period of several days. S...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Barrientos, R., Bueno-Enciso, J., Sanz, J. J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5125266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27892941
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37750
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author Barrientos, R.
Bueno-Enciso, J.
Sanz, J. J.
author_facet Barrientos, R.
Bueno-Enciso, J.
Sanz, J. J.
author_sort Barrientos, R.
collection PubMed
description Breeding mistiming is increasingly frequent in several ecosystems in the face of current climate change. Species belonging to higher trophic levels must employ mechanisms to reduce it. One of these mechanisms is hatching asynchrony, with the eggs in a clutch hatching over a period of several days. Some authors have suggested it to be adaptive when food is unpredictable. However, these birds can also suffer associated costs. We tested whether a species with higher foraging efficiency avoid hatching asynchrony compared to its sister species. We studied hatching asynchrony and nestling provisioning in relation to food availability in sympatric populations of blue and great tits. For the first time, we show that sister species respond to food availability with different strategies. Blue tit feeding rates readily responded to the abundance of their main prey, and also reduced the impact of nestling size hierarchy on mean nestling weight, consequently increasing fledging rate. Our results suggest that levels of hatching asynchrony seem to be influenced by species-specific life history traits, as generalist foragers rely less on it. They also highlight the importance of multi-species approaches when studying the response of organisms to environmental unpredictability.
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spelling pubmed-51252662016-12-08 Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species Barrientos, R. Bueno-Enciso, J. Sanz, J. J. Sci Rep Article Breeding mistiming is increasingly frequent in several ecosystems in the face of current climate change. Species belonging to higher trophic levels must employ mechanisms to reduce it. One of these mechanisms is hatching asynchrony, with the eggs in a clutch hatching over a period of several days. Some authors have suggested it to be adaptive when food is unpredictable. However, these birds can also suffer associated costs. We tested whether a species with higher foraging efficiency avoid hatching asynchrony compared to its sister species. We studied hatching asynchrony and nestling provisioning in relation to food availability in sympatric populations of blue and great tits. For the first time, we show that sister species respond to food availability with different strategies. Blue tit feeding rates readily responded to the abundance of their main prey, and also reduced the impact of nestling size hierarchy on mean nestling weight, consequently increasing fledging rate. Our results suggest that levels of hatching asynchrony seem to be influenced by species-specific life history traits, as generalist foragers rely less on it. They also highlight the importance of multi-species approaches when studying the response of organisms to environmental unpredictability. Nature Publishing Group 2016-11-28 /pmc/articles/PMC5125266/ /pubmed/27892941 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37750 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Barrientos, R.
Bueno-Enciso, J.
Sanz, J. J.
Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
title Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
title_full Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
title_fullStr Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
title_full_unstemmed Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
title_short Hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
title_sort hatching asynchrony vs. foraging efficiency: the response to food availability in specialist vs. generalist tit species
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5125266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27892941
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37750
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