Hissing females of great tits (Parus major) have lower breeding success than non‐hissing individuals

Abstract

Antipredator strategies vary remarkably between individuals within populations. Parents tend to take greater risks when brood value is increased. Moreover, individuals consistently differ in a whole suite of correlated behaviours that may cause distinctive responses to predators. It is likely that individual differences in antipredator behaviour may co‐vary with proxies for fitness such as reproductive success. We used a 4‐year data from wild great tits (Parus major) to test whether passive and active antipredator strategies (females with no response vs. those giving hissing calls towards a nest predator) during the incubation stage can reflect variation in breeding success. Although clutch size did not depend on hissing behaviour, the number of surviving offspring from eggs and neonates to fledglings was higher for non‐hissing than hissing birds. We conclude that females with distinct antipredator strategies can prioritize different fitness components.

Pathways linking female personality with reproductive success are trait- and year-specific

“…Hissing behavior consists of the production of hissing calls -often accompanied with intense flapping of the wings and lunging at the predator -which can have deterring effects on predators (Zub et al 2017;Dutour et al 2020). Recent work indicates that the production of hissing calls can positively correlate with adult survival (Krams et al 2014) but negatively affect offspring production and breeding success (Koosa and Tilgar 2016;Thys et al 2019;Tilgar and Koosa 2019), suggesting that different hissing behavioral types may prioritize different components of fitness. Yet, how these relationships come about and whether this is mediated by differential investment into parental activities such as provisioning behavior remains to be studied.…”