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

Abstract

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.

Ain’t going down without a fight: state-and environment-dependence of antipredator defensive aggressive personalities in Carpetan rock lizard

“…Results of our experiment indicate that differences in inherently stable state variables (size, hind limb length) affect individual antipredator aggression, further emphasising the ecological and evolutionary relevance of this behaviour. Nevertheless, as other inherently labile traits, such as levels of testosterone are proved to substantially affect intraspecific social aggression in a various of taxa (Veiga et al 1998;Weiss and Moore 2004;O'Connor et al 2014;Szász et al 2019), further studies are needed to reveal potential background mechanisms behind variation in antipredator aggression. Linking antipredator-and social aggression in a behavioural syndrome framework (Sih et al 2004;Dingemanse et al 2012;Dochtermann and Dingemanse 2013), as well as understanding the inheritance of antipredator aggression also warrants future studies.…”

“…Evolutionary behavioural ecology of consistent individual behavioural differences across time and ecological situations in a population (i.e. animal personality) became intensively studied during the last decades (for reviews and meta-Communicated by S. Joy Downes analyses see Réale et al 2007;Sih and Bell 2008;Bell et al 2009;Sih et al 2012;Garamszegi et al 2013;Niemelä and Dingemanse 2018), and aggression is among the most frequently studied behavioural traits in this field across several taxa (Mafli et al 2011;Sih et al 2015;Santostefano et al 2016;Michelangeli et al 2017;Szász et al 2019). However, aggression is usually evaluated in a social context, where it is motivated by resource control, including territorial and dominance disputes (often termed 'offensive aggression'; see Nelson 2006).…”

The effect of social environment on bird song: listener-specific expression of a sexual signal

“…This can also be judged from their behavioral responses, as when returned to their territory focal males immediately started to display their nest-box for female stimuli, or displayed aggressive approaches toward the cage of the male stimuli ( Garamszegi et al 2008 ). In previous studies, we measured the latency to initiate an aggressive approach toward the male stimulus, but we found that this behavioral variable was weakly, if any, predicted by the identity of the stimulus ( Szász et al 2019 ). We did not make song recordings during the presentation of the stimuli, as focal males did not typically sing in these situations (they may have uttered some stereotyped contact calls when presented with female stimulus, but these have very little among-individual variance and different function than that of bird song used as a signal in sexual selection).…”

Triparental care in the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis): Cooperation of two females with a cuckolded male in rearing a brood

“…For detailed methods and results, see Laczi et al., 2017 . Additionally, for another experiment, video recordings were conducted (with 2‐hr footages) at other nests too with 10‐day‐‐old offspring ( n = 17 in 2015, n = 19 in 2016, see details in Szász et al., 2019 ).…”