Influence of Male Dominance on Egg Testosterone and Antibacterial Substances in the Egg of Grey Partridges

Grenna, Marco; Avidano, Lorena; Malacarne, Giorgio; Leboucher, Gérard; Cucco, Marco

doi:10.1111/eth.12189

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…Third, aggression may influence paternity gain and loss if it is coupled with ejaculate quality (Rojas Mora et al 2017), mate guarding and/or copulation frequency (Ophir et al 2005) and/or extrapair activity (Spoon et al 2007;van Oers et al 2008). Lastly, aggression may influence hatching and fledging success either via nest-site quality (see above), differential maternal allocation (Grenna et al 2014;Szász et al 2014) or paternal provisioning, which can be negatively related to aggression (Duckworth 2006;Mutzel et al 2013).…”

Section: Communicated By: Pamela Cecile Rasmussenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Male territorial aggression and fitness in collared flycatchers: a long-term study

Szász

Jablonszky

Krenhardt

et al. 2019

Sci Nat

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Aggressive behaviour plays a fundamental role in the distribution of limiting resources. Thereby, it is expected to have consequences for fitness. Here, we explored the relationship between aggression and fitness in a long-term database collected in a wild population of the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis). We quantified the aggression of males during nest-site defence by conducting simulated territorial intrusions in the courtship period. We estimated the fitness of males based on their pairing success, breeding output and survival to next year. Earlier arriving and older males had a higher probability to establish pairbond, and males that started to breed earlier fledged more young. Aggression did not predict pairing and breeding performances. However, the probability of a male to return in the next year was significantly related to aggression in an age-dependent manner. Among subadult males, more aggressive individuals had higher chances to return, while among adult males, less aggressive ones did so. This finding is in harmony with our general observation that subadult collared flycatcher males behave more aggressively than adult males when confronted with a conspecific intruder. Subadult males may be socially inexperienced, so they should be more aggressive to be successful. In contrast, if adult males suffer from higher physiological costs, a lower level of aggression may be more advantageous for them. Our study shows that aggressive behaviour can be a fitness-related trait, and to understand its role in determining fitness, age should be taken into account.

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Section: Communicated By: Pamela Cecile Rasmussenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Male territorial aggression and fitness in collared flycatchers: a long-term study

Szász

Jablonszky

Krenhardt

et al. 2019

Sci Nat

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“…A link between courtship and parental behaviour of males is also suggested indirectly by several empirical studies that found behavioural traits to play roles in mate choice (Otter and Ratcliffe 1996;Ophir and Galef 2003;Ophir et al 2005;Kunc et al 2006), differential allocation (Gwinner and Schwabl 2005;Grenna et al 2014) or sex allocation (Ramsay et al 2003;Szász et al 2014).…”

Section: Communicated By K Van Oersmentioning

confidence: 81%

Nest-site defence aggression during courtship does not predict nestling provisioning in male collared flycatchers

Szász

Markó

Hegyi

et al. 2019

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Individuals of many animal species show consistent differences in ecologically relevant behaviours, and these individual-specific behaviours can correlate with each other. In passerines, aggression during nest-site defence is one of those behaviours that have been steadily found to be repeatable within individuals. Furthermore, in several cases, aggression was related to some estimates of reproductive investment. Here, we studied the possibility that behaviour of males toward a male rival predicts the amount of their future parental care. This could be beneficial to the females, because during mate choice, they could use male aggressive behaviour as a cue for parental quality. We performed the study by video recording the nestling feeding activity of male collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis) that were assayed for aggression during the courtship period. The level of aggression was not related to feeding rate in males. Feeding rate of males differed between the study years, but it did not correlate with the feeding rate of their mates, neither was it related to the morphological traits of the parents. We may conclude that nest-site defence aggression of males does not predict their parental commitment. This may be surprising given that higher testosterone levels that may be expected in aggressive males often suppress parental care. However, among-individual variance in male testosterone profiles found to be decrease from the courtship to the parenting period in flycatchers, and this may explain why differences in territorial aggression did not manifest in differences in nestling provisioning. The correlation between behaviours that are expressed in distinct periods of the annual cycle of songbirds needs further investigation. Significance statement Male songbirds, when attracting mates, are often confronted with each other over nest-sites, and these male-male confrontations may be witnessed by females. If performance during territory defence predicts the quality of parental care that a male will provide for its nestlings, females could use defence behaviour as a cue for mate choice. To explore this possibility, we investigated the relationship between territorial aggression and nestling feeding activity of male collared flycatchers. We performed simulated territorial intrusions to measure the aggression of males and recorded their nestling feeding rate about a month later. We found that territorial aggression did not correlate with nestling feeding rate. This suggests that nest-site defence behaviour in the beginning of the breeding season does not carry information for females about what to expect from potential mates in terms of parental care.

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“…From April to June, the hens laid a mean of 27.9 eggs, with a total of 5,209 eggs throughout the eight years. Most of the eggs laid were incubated for 26 days in a commercial incubator at 37.5 °C and 60% humidity, while 622 eggs (100 in 2002, 169 in 2003, 267 in 2005, and 86 in 2011) were brought to the lab for chemical analyses, and were analysed for concurrent studies (Cucco et al, 2012;Grenna et al, 2014).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Egg Characteristics in Relation to Skipped Days of Laying in the Grey Partridge

Cucco

Grenna

Pellegrino

2017

Avian Biology Research

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Birds sometimes skip a day along the sequence of egg laying, which may vary the mass or the composition of delayed eggs compared with those that were laid consecutively. Our literature review shows that this has been interpreted as a short-term adaptation that enables females to overcome energetic constraints during the laying period, but other hypotheses implying the influence of weather, pollution, or hormonal cycles have also been proposed. We collected freshly laid Grey Partridge Perdix perdix eggs to determine the effects of laying gaps on egg characteristics. Egg shape, as well as egg components (beta-carotene, avidin and lysozyme concentrations) did not vary in relation to skipped days. Eggs were slightly heavier when one or two days were skipped (0.72% and 0.45%, respectively). However, when examining the hatching rate, we found a significant decrease in relation to skipped days, hence eggs following laying gaps showed a lower hatching rate than other eggs. The pattern observed could indicate the presence of some physiological stress that caused females to skip one or two days and to lay eggs that hatched less.

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Influence of Male Dominance on Egg Testosterone and Antibacterial Substances in the Egg of Grey Partridges

Cited by 4 publications

References 83 publications

Male territorial aggression and fitness in collared flycatchers: a long-term study

Male territorial aggression and fitness in collared flycatchers: a long-term study

Nest-site defence aggression during courtship does not predict nestling provisioning in male collared flycatchers

Egg Characteristics in Relation to Skipped Days of Laying in the Grey Partridge

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