Incubation is an important aspect of avian life history. The behaviour is energetically costly, and investment in incubation strategies within species, like female nest attentiveness and the feeding by the non-incubating partner during incubation, can therefore vary depending on environmental and individual characteristics. However, little is known about the combined effect of these characteristics. We investigated the importance of ambient temperature, habitat quality, and bird age on female incubation behaviour and male feeding of the incubating female (incubation feeding) in blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus, a socially monogamous songbird. An increase in ambient temperature resulted in a higher nest temperature, and this enabled females to increase the time off the nest for self-maintenance activities. Probably as a consequence of this, an increase in ambient temperature was associated with fewer incubation feedings by the male. Moreover, in areas with more food available (more deciduous trees), females had shorter incubation recesses and males fed females less often. Additionally, males fed young females more, presumably to increase such females’ investment in their eggs, which were colder on average (despite the length of recesses and female nest attentiveness being independent of female age). Male age did not affect incubation feeding rate. In conclusion, the patterns of incubation behaviour were related to both environmental and individual characteristics, and male incubation feeding was adjusted to females’ need for food according these characteristics, which can facilitate new insights to the study of avian incubation energetics.Significance statementParents often invest a substantial amount of energy in raising offspring. How much they do so depends on several environmental factors and on the extent they cooperate to raise the offspring. In birds, males can feed incubating females, which may allow females to stay longer on the nest, which, in turn, may ultimately improve reproductive success. The interplay between environmental factors and such incubation feeding on incubation attendance has, however, received little attention. Here, we show that favourable circumstances (higher ambient temperature and food availability) allowed incubating blue tit females to increase the time off the nest to improve self-maintenance and males to feed them less, whereas males also fed inexperienced partners more often. Thus, we show a concerted effect of several environmental and intrinsic factors on parental effort during incubation, which will help to improve the general understanding of avian incubation and parental care.

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The high performance of an oil−water separator relies largely on unique design of the architecture with a hierarchical and porous morphology as well as smart wetting responsiveness of active materials. A well-structured NaOHtreated antioil nonwoven mesh with in-situ and ex-situ pHswitched wetting was successfully prepared by controlled electrospinning of SAN copolymer followed by thermal treating in NaOH aqueous solution. The as-obtained robust and flexible pHswitched antioil mesh with highly accessible pH-responsive groups and a 3D open porous network geometry not only will achieve durable superhydrophilicity/superoleophobicity in air but also a superior underwater low-adhesive superoleophobicity could be obtained, leading the surface to be successfully used for long-term usage immiscible/emulsified light oil−water separation using only gravity-driven force with excellent antioil fouling during multiple cycles. Simultaneously, the water-soluble pollutant could be effectively captured by the antioil mesh and simply released in ethanol media. The "extended coil conformation" and "intermolecular hydrogen bonding" are proposed to explain the antioil wetting behavior. Most importantly, smart reversible pH switching from antioil to antiwater wetting could be simply and quickly obtained only by immersing the NaOH-treated mesh in acidic-aqueous solution to obtain an acid-treated antiwater mesh acting in "oil removing", which is repeatedly cycled without causing any damage to the mesh and loss of pH responsiveness. It is believed that such highly cost-effective and commercially scaled up smart material will be a promising candidate for use in removal of oil-polluted waters in the future.

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