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Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation
Quail eggs have been widely used in field experiments, mainly to study factors associated with the risk of nest predation. Some shortcomings of using quail eggs in this type of study have been previously addressed (e.g., these eggs might be too big for some predators of eggs of small birds). Here, w...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8269738/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34277153 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11725 |
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author | Liñan Cembrano, Gustavo Castro, Macarena Amat, Juan A. Perez, Alejandro Rendón, Miguel Ángel Ramo, Cristina |
author_facet | Liñan Cembrano, Gustavo Castro, Macarena Amat, Juan A. Perez, Alejandro Rendón, Miguel Ángel Ramo, Cristina |
author_sort | Liñan Cembrano, Gustavo |
collection | PubMed |
description | Quail eggs have been widely used in field experiments, mainly to study factors associated with the risk of nest predation. Some shortcomings of using quail eggs in this type of study have been previously addressed (e.g., these eggs might be too big for some predators of eggs of small birds). Here, we show experimental evidence of another shortcoming of the use of these eggs in field experiments. Quail eggs exposed to sunlight rapidly faded in colour after three days, both in the visible and UV spectra, and this change was related to the amount of solar radiation received. This caused changes in the camouflage of the eggs, which may be perceived by predators with different visual systems (dichromatic, trichromatic, and tetrachromatic (for both violet- and UV-sensitive species)). Therefore, the results of field studies of nest predation using quail eggs might be questioned in those cases in which the camouflage has been altered due to the rapid changes in coloration, as this can affect the resulting predation rates. We recommend that researchers planning to use quail eggs should perform a prospective assessment of changes in coloration of eggs exposed to environmental conditions in the nest sites used by the target species. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8269738 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82697382021-07-16 Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation Liñan Cembrano, Gustavo Castro, Macarena Amat, Juan A. Perez, Alejandro Rendón, Miguel Ángel Ramo, Cristina PeerJ Conservation Biology Quail eggs have been widely used in field experiments, mainly to study factors associated with the risk of nest predation. Some shortcomings of using quail eggs in this type of study have been previously addressed (e.g., these eggs might be too big for some predators of eggs of small birds). Here, we show experimental evidence of another shortcoming of the use of these eggs in field experiments. Quail eggs exposed to sunlight rapidly faded in colour after three days, both in the visible and UV spectra, and this change was related to the amount of solar radiation received. This caused changes in the camouflage of the eggs, which may be perceived by predators with different visual systems (dichromatic, trichromatic, and tetrachromatic (for both violet- and UV-sensitive species)). Therefore, the results of field studies of nest predation using quail eggs might be questioned in those cases in which the camouflage has been altered due to the rapid changes in coloration, as this can affect the resulting predation rates. We recommend that researchers planning to use quail eggs should perform a prospective assessment of changes in coloration of eggs exposed to environmental conditions in the nest sites used by the target species. PeerJ Inc. 2021-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8269738/ /pubmed/34277153 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11725 Text en © 2021 Liñan Cembrano et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Conservation Biology Liñan Cembrano, Gustavo Castro, Macarena Amat, Juan A. Perez, Alejandro Rendón, Miguel Ángel Ramo, Cristina Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
title | Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
title_full | Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
title_fullStr | Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
title_full_unstemmed | Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
title_short | Quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
title_sort | quail eggs in artificial nests change their coloration when exposed to ambient conditions: implication for studies on nest predation |
topic | Conservation Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8269738/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34277153 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11725 |
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