Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

Arcese, Peter; Sogge, Mark K.; Marr, Amy B.; Patten, Michael A.

doi:10.2173/bna.704

Cited by 86 publications

(70 citation statements)

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“…18,19,20 Mangrove forests have some food sources that differ from those found in adjacent terrestrial forests. 21,22 Three species of mangrove-restricted birds forage mainly on crabs, 23,24 which are not as abundant in nontidal habitat.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Island Syndrome in Coastal Wetland Ecosystems: Convergent Evolution of Large Bills in Mangrove Passerines

Luther

Greenberg

2011

The Auk

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Resumen.-Las aves paserinas que viven en islas tienden a tener picos más grandes que sus parientes continentales. Los cambios morfológicos podrían estar relacionados con la reducción de la competencia intra e interespecífica. Los gorriones emberízidos que habitan marismas de Norteamérica también presentan picos de tamaños consistentemente mayores. Pusimos a prueba la hipótesis de que los paserinos restringidos a bosques de manglares, otro sistema continental con baja diversidad de especies y con altas densidades, también tienen picos más grandes que los de sus parientes más cercanos no asociados con sistemas intermareales. Encontramos un patrón pantropical consistente de picos más largos y profundos en aves paserinas restringidas a manglares. Estos resultados indican lo que parece ser una regla ecológica general: las aves paserinas restringidas a hábitats costeros salinos presentan picos desproporcionadamente más largos en relación con su tamaño corporal, tal como se ha encontrado en islas. El patrón similar en la morfología del pico sugiere que los procesos ecológicos y evolutivos que se pensaba que ocurrían sólo en sistemas insulares pueden ocurrir también en algunos sistemas continentales.-201 - Abstract.-Passerine birds on islands tend to have larger bills than their mainland relatives. The morphological shift may be related to reduced interspecific and increased intraspecific competition. Emberizid sparrows in North American salt marshes also show consistently greater bill size. We tested the hypothesis that passerines restricted to mangrove forests, another continental system with low species diversity and high population densities, also have larger bills than their closest nontidal relatives. We found a consistent pantropical pattern of longer and deeper bills in passerine birds restricted to mangroves. These results indicate that disproportionately longer bills in relation to body size in passerines restricted to coastal saline habitats, just like those found on islands, seems to be a general ecological rule. The similar pattern in bill morphology suggests that ecological and evolutionary processes thought to occur only in island systems might also occur in some continental systems.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Island Syndrome in Coastal Wetland Ecosystems: Convergent Evolution of Large Bills in Mangrove Passerines

Luther

Greenberg

2011

The Auk

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“…The closed cover group consists of the Harris's Sparrow (Zonotrichia querula), the White-throated Sparrow (Z. albicollis), the Lincoln's Sparrow (M. lincolnii ), the White-crowned Sparrow (Z. leucophrys), the Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculata), the Swamp Sparrow (M. georgiana), the Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca), and the Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia). In winter these closed cover birds feed in dense cover and are rarely or never seen on obvious foraging circuits (Norment and Shackelton 1993, Falls and Kopachena 1994, Ammon 1995, Chilton et al 1995, Greenlaw 1996, Mowbray 1997, Weckstein et al 2002, Arcese et al 2004.…”

Section: Cover Comparison and Study Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing optimal body mass theory: Evidence for cost of fat in wintering birds

Rogers

2015

Ecosphere

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Abstract. Optimal body mass models for small wintering birds are central to animal ecology, and offer insights into maximizing individual fitness in a complex environment. Such models assume both costs and benefits of fat deposition, and consider how they affect winter survival probability. Hypothesized massdependent costs of elevated fat include increased wing load and subsequent reduced ability to avoid predators, as well as increased predator exposure while feeding to fatten. A likely benefit of winter fat is increased fasting capacity during resource shortages. Here I test optimal body mass theory by searching for both cost and benefits of winter fattening, utilizing interspecific variation in winter fat in natural populations. If increased predation risk is a mass-dependent cost of fattening, wintering birds occupying dense (closed) winter habitat offering low exposure to predators should show (1) higher fat reserves, and (2) higher wing load, than wintering birds occupying less dense (open) habitat offering less protection from predators. This prediction was tested in the two winters in south-central Kansas, a north temperate region with winter precipitation falling as snow and low ambient winter temperatures. The predicted patterns in wing load and winter fat reserve were observed: with phylogeny controlled, both were significantly lower in two open cover species (Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis, American Tree Sparrow Spizella arborea) than in eight closed cover species (seven sparrow species in the genera Melospiza, Passerella, and Zonotrichia, and the Spotted Towhee Pipilo maculatus). Body mass increased with wing area at a greater rate in the closed than in the open cover group, indicating lower body-size specific wing load in the latter group. With phylogeny controlled, fat level varied inversely with resource predictability among three winter foraging guilds occupying a vertical gradient of snowfall probability, indicating both costs and benefits exist in the study system. This study is the first to support the existence of fat cost with a positive fat-cover relationship in natural populations. These results serve to verify the cost-benefit approach widely taken by optimal body mass models, to studying the relationship between a surrogate fitness variable and factors affecting it in a variable winter environment.

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“…In vagile species, such as birds, it is often not known how genetic differentiation between populations is maintained in the absence of barriers to dispersal, particularly among migrants (Paradis et al, 1998;Arguedas and Parker, 2000). Here, we ask how migratory behavior and the distribution of song sparrow populations influences genetic structure along the Pacific coast of western North America where this species occurs in sedentary and partially migratory populations (Table 1; Arcese et al, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of contemporary processes in maintaining the genetic structure of western song sparrows (Melospiza melodia)

et al. 2008

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Historic events and contemporary processes work in concert to create and maintain geographically partitioned variation and are instrumental in the generation of biodiversity. We sought to gain a better understanding of how contemporary processes such as movement and isolation influence the genetic structure of widely distributed vagile species such as birds. Song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) in western North America provide a natural system for examining the genetics of populations that have different patterns of geographic isolation and migratory behavior. We examined the population genetics of 576 song sparrows from 23 populations using seven microsatellite loci to assess genetic differentiation among populations and to estimate the effects of drift and immigration (gene flow) on each population. Sedentary, isolated populations were characterized by low levels of immigration and high levels of genetic drift, whereas those populations less isolated displayed signals of high gene flow and little differentiation from other populations. Contemporary dispersal rates from migratory populations, estimated by assignment test, were higher and occurred over larger distances than dispersal from sedentary populations but were also probably too low to counter the effects of drift in most populations. We suggest that geographic isolation and limited gene flow facilitated by migratory behavior are responsible for maintaining observed levels of differentiation among Pacific coastal song sparrow populations.

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Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

Cited by 86 publications

References 0 publications

The Island Syndrome in Coastal Wetland Ecosystems: Convergent Evolution of Large Bills in Mangrove Passerines

The Island Syndrome in Coastal Wetland Ecosystems: Convergent Evolution of Large Bills in Mangrove Passerines

Testing optimal body mass theory: Evidence for cost of fat in wintering birds

The effects of contemporary processes in maintaining the genetic structure of western song sparrows (Melospiza melodia)

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