Parental provisioning in house wrens: effects of varying brood size and consequences for offspring

Bowers, E. Keith; Nietz, Daniela; Thompson, Charles F.; Sakaluk, Scott K.

doi:10.1093/beheco/aru153

Cited by 42 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Only females incubate eggs, but both parents provision offspring with food after hatching, and the length of the nestling period is typically ca. 15 days (Bowers et al 2013, 2014a). House wrens readily accept nestboxes for nesting, and the nestboxes in this study were spaced 30 m apart along north-south transects separated by 60 m and mounted atop 48.3-cm diameter aluminum predator baffles on 1.5-m poles (Lambrechts et al 2010 provide further details on nestboxes).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated corticosterone during egg production elicits increased maternal investment and promotes nestling growth in a wild songbird

Bowers

Bowden

Thompson

et al. 2016

Hormones and Behavior

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Glucocorticoids circulating in breeding birds during egg production accumulate within eggs, and may provide a potent form of maternal effect on offspring phenotype. However, whether these steroids affect offspring development remains unclear. Here, we employed a non-invasive technique that experimentally elevated the maternal transfer of corticosterone to eggs in a wild population of house wrens. Feeding corticosterone-injected mealworms to free-living females prior to and during egg production increased the number of eggs that females produced and increased corticosterone concentrations in egg yolks. This treatment also resulted in an increase in the amount of yolk allocated to eggs. Offspring hatching from these eggs begged for food at a higher rate than control offspring and eventually attained increased prefledging body condition, a trait predictive of their probability of recruitment as breeding adults in the study population. Our results indicate that an increase in maternal glucocorticoids within the physiological range can enhance maternal investment and offspring development.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated corticosterone during egg production elicits increased maternal investment and promotes nestling growth in a wild songbird

Bowers

Bowden

Thompson

et al. 2016

Hormones and Behavior

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“…We predicted that, if this is the case, then these conditions would also predict the offspring sex ratio. We predicted that females that were heavier-than-average and those reared in smaller broods as nestlings (nestlings in smaller broods benefit from increased per-capita food availability; Bowers et al 2014b) would produce heavier offspring and a male-biased sex ratio as adults. In addition, we tested whether a female’s current breeding conditions also influence offspring condition and sex ratios by obtaining an objective proxy of territory quality (the number of offspring successfully fledged from a nestbox over the ten years prior to this study; see Methods).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal Natal Environment and Breeding Territory Predict the Condition and Sex Ratio of Offspring

2016

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Females in a variety of taxa adjust offspring sex ratios to prevailing ecological conditions. However, little is known about whether conditions experienced during a female’s early ontogeny influence the sex ratio of her offspring. We tested for past and present ecological predictors of offspring sex ratios among known-age females that were produced as offspring and bred as adults in a population of house wrens. The body condition of offspring that a female produced and the proportion of her offspring that were male were negatively correlated with the size of the brood in which she herself was reared. The proportion of sons within broods was negatively correlated with maternal hatching date, and varied positively with the quality of a female’s current breeding territory as predicted. However, females producing relatively more sons than daughters were less likely to return to breed in the population the following year. Although correlative, our results suggest that the rearing environment can have enduring effects on later maternal investment and sex allocation. Moreover, the overproduction of sons relative to daughters may increase costs to a female’s residual reproductive value, constraining the extent to which sons might be produced in high-quality breeding conditions. Sex allocation in birds remains a contentious subject, largely because effects on offspring sex ratios are small. Our results suggest that offspring sex ratios are shaped by various processes and trade-offs that act throughout the female life history and ultimately reduce the extent of sex-ratio adjustment relative to classic theoretical predictions.

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“…Egg size had positive effects on the offspring's fitnessrelated traits, indicating that parents did not fully compensate for small eggs with more intensive prenatal (incubation behaviour; DuRant et al 2013) or postnatal (offspring provisioning; Bowers et al 2014) care. Avian egg size thus might be as important for offspring fitness as in taxa with little parental care, such as in fish.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, birds usually have a more-developed parental care in the form of incubation and offspring provisioning, which impacts offspring phenotypes (DuRant et al 2013, Bowers et al 2014) and thus could mitigate earlier maternal effects. Therefore, whether contextdependence may induce the same inter-population variability of egg size in birds as was found in fish is unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2015

The Auk

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Parental provisioning in house wrens: effects of varying brood size and consequences for offspring

Cited by 42 publications

References 76 publications

Elevated corticosterone during egg production elicits increased maternal investment and promotes nestling growth in a wild songbird

Elevated corticosterone during egg production elicits increased maternal investment and promotes nestling growth in a wild songbird

Maternal Natal Environment and Breeding Territory Predict the Condition and Sex Ratio of Offspring

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