Development of flight performance in the brown booby

Abstract

How do birds acquire flight skills after fledging? This issue is important, as it is closely related to variation in the duration of offspring care, the causes of which remain unknown. In this study, we raised hatchling brown boobies, Sula leucogaster, and attached an acceleration data logger to each bird at fledging to record its movements. This allowed us to quantify precisely the time spent flapping, gliding and resting. The duration of foraging trips and proportion of time spent gliding during flight increased with the number of days since fledging, whereas the proportion of time spent in flight decreased. This indicates that brown boobies gradually acquire efficient flight skills during the post-fledging period, which might be the proximate cause of the long postfledging care period in this species. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to record precisely the ontogeny of flight behaviour in birds.

The role of experience in flight behaviour ofDrosophila

“…Conventionally, it is not believed that invertebrates such as insects are capable of showing motor learning based on sensory input or from experience, as has been found in vertebrates (Yoda et al, 2004). Undoubtedly, most flight behaviour in Drosophila seems to be genetically predetermined, because naive flies show seemingly 'normal' flight behaviour when randomly released into the laboratory.…”

“…Traditionally, flight in birds is assumed to be correlated with maturation and thus with the development of muscles and neurons, without any learning taking place (Grohmann, 1939). A recent study on the brown booby Sula leucogaster, however, showed that flight duration decreases and the proportion of time spent gliding increases, with the number of days since fledging, indicating that flight becomes more efficient with experience in this seabird (Yoda et al, 2004). Motor skills in insects and other invertebrates, by contrast, are still widely recognised as being predominantly innate fixed-action patterns.…”

“…In humans it typically takes several years of practice to become skilled in dexterous tasks and sport disciplines, and birds learn to fly efficiently within days or weeks after leaving the nest (Yoda et al, 2004;Hamer et al, 2002). Traditionally, flight in birds is assumed to be correlated with maturation and thus with the development of muscles and neurons, without any learning taking place (Grohmann, 1939).…”

Do naive juvenile seabirds forage differently from adults?

“…By 'learning', we here mean a change in behaviour resulting from experience [9]. In particular, learning of foraging techniques during immaturity has been studied in primates [10], bears [11], dolphins [12], seabirds [3,13,14], and insects (e.g. [15]).…”

“…The study of learning behaviours during immaturity raises important questions about innate and learned behaviours, and the evolutionary [16], social [17] and memorization [9] processes involved. Learning processes can result from individual experience [3,14,15] or can also imply a transfer of information between conspecifics: this is generally considered as 'social learning' [10 -12].…”