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Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings

Animals require strategies for coping with periods when food is scarce. Such strategies include storing fat as a buffer, and defending the rate of energy intake by changing foraging behaviour when food becomes difficult to obtain. Storage and behavioural defence may constitute alternative strategies...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dunn, Jonathon, Andrews, Clare, Nettle, Daniel, Bateson, Melissa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society Publishing 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5990846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29892383
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171918
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author Dunn, Jonathon
Andrews, Clare
Nettle, Daniel
Bateson, Melissa
author_facet Dunn, Jonathon
Andrews, Clare
Nettle, Daniel
Bateson, Melissa
author_sort Dunn, Jonathon
collection PubMed
description Animals require strategies for coping with periods when food is scarce. Such strategies include storing fat as a buffer, and defending the rate of energy intake by changing foraging behaviour when food becomes difficult to obtain. Storage and behavioural defence may constitute alternative strategies for solving the same problem. We would thus expect any developmental influences that limit fat storage in adulthood to also induce a compensatory alteration in adult foraging behaviour, specifically when food is hard to obtain. In a cohort of hand-reared European starlings, we found that higher manipulated early-life begging effort caused individuals to maintain consistently lower adult body mass over a period of two years. Using an operant foraging task in which we systematically varied the costs of obtaining food, we show that higher early-life begging effort also caused stronger behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake when food was more costly to obtain. Among individuals with the same developmental history, however, those individuals who defended their rate of energy intake most strongly were also the heaviest. Our results are relevant to understanding why there are marked differences in body weight and foraging behaviour even among individuals inhabiting the same environment.
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spelling pubmed-59908462018-06-11 Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings Dunn, Jonathon Andrews, Clare Nettle, Daniel Bateson, Melissa R Soc Open Sci Biology (Whole Organism) Animals require strategies for coping with periods when food is scarce. Such strategies include storing fat as a buffer, and defending the rate of energy intake by changing foraging behaviour when food becomes difficult to obtain. Storage and behavioural defence may constitute alternative strategies for solving the same problem. We would thus expect any developmental influences that limit fat storage in adulthood to also induce a compensatory alteration in adult foraging behaviour, specifically when food is hard to obtain. In a cohort of hand-reared European starlings, we found that higher manipulated early-life begging effort caused individuals to maintain consistently lower adult body mass over a period of two years. Using an operant foraging task in which we systematically varied the costs of obtaining food, we show that higher early-life begging effort also caused stronger behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake when food was more costly to obtain. Among individuals with the same developmental history, however, those individuals who defended their rate of energy intake most strongly were also the heaviest. Our results are relevant to understanding why there are marked differences in body weight and foraging behaviour even among individuals inhabiting the same environment. The Royal Society Publishing 2018-05-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5990846/ /pubmed/29892383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171918 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biology (Whole Organism)
Dunn, Jonathon
Andrews, Clare
Nettle, Daniel
Bateson, Melissa
Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings
title Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings
title_full Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings
title_fullStr Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings
title_full_unstemmed Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings
title_short Early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in European starlings
title_sort early-life begging effort reduces adult body mass but strengthens behavioural defence of the rate of energy intake in european starlings
topic Biology (Whole Organism)
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5990846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29892383
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171918
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