Tri-axial accelerometry shows differences in energy expenditure and parental effort throughout the breeding season in long-lived raptors

López‐López, Pascual; Perona, Arturo M.; Egea-Casas, Olga; Morant, Jon; Urios, Vicente

doi:10.1093/cz/zoab010

Cited by 20 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…In this way, the nest may indicate parental quality, experience or genetic quality, and therefore females could benefit from mating with good nest-building males 13 . Previous studies describing bi-parental care in Bonelli’s Eagles have shown a sex-biased specialization in parental duties 48 , 79 . Females invested significantly more effort than males in gathering nest-material during the incubation and offspring attendance period 48 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Effect of nest composition, experience and nest quality on nest-building behaviour in the Bonelli’s Eagle

Martínez

Zuberogoitia²,

Calvo

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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In bi-parentally built nests, there is evidence to suggest that nests are extended phenotypic signals that accurately indicate the quality of the building parent/s. Raptors often use a variety of materials to build their nests (natural, such as branches, but also non-natural objects), presumably due to their insulating properties, their suitability to advertise occupancy of the nest, and to decrease pathogen and parasite loads. However, in raptors where both sexes collaborate in nest construction, it is unclear whether nest building (taking the amount of material carried to the nest as the potential predictor) is an indicator of parental quality, and whether the effort expended by both sexes could constitute an honest signal of parental quality to their partners. Between 2011 and 2016, we monitored 16 nests of Bonelli’s Eagles (Aquila fasciata), and we examined data on sex, type of material brought to the nest, breeding experience, nest quality, timing, and nest-building investment prior to egg-laying from 32 identifiable Bonelli’s Eagles during the pre-laying period to investigate the relative contribution of the sexes to the amount of nest material gathered. Our results indicate that sex is not a determining factor in nest-building effort, and that females did not increase their parental effort in response to the male’s contribution, and supply of materials did not increase during the pre-laying period. In contrast, our models showed that: (1) the type of material supplied to the nest by both sexes varied significantly throughout the pre-laying period and (2) nest-building effort was determined by individual experience and nest quality. Therefore, our study suggests that male nest-building behaviour and investment by Bonelli’s Eagles cannot be considered as an extended phenotypic signal. The differential use of hard and green material by both sexes in the early and late stages of nest-building period, and the fact that the more experienced individuals contributed a larger amount of material on low quality nests, are discussed in the contexts of signaling nest occupancy to conspecifics and competitors and the decrease of ectoparasite loads during the pre-laying period.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Effect of nest composition, experience and nest quality on nest-building behaviour in the Bonelli’s Eagle

Martínez

Zuberogoitia²,

Calvo

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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“…Thus, if male investment in nest construction is a consistent trait of any particular male, it is likely that females will use male nest-building effort to assess male parental quality and that the amount of branches and sticks that males deliver to the nest would become a sexually selected trait 20,33 . Previous studies describing biparental care in Bonelli's Eagles have shown a sex-biased specialization in parental duties 51,91 . Females invested signi cantly more effort than males in gathering nest-material during the breeding season 51 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nest-Building Effort is Not An Indicator of Male Quality In Bonelli’s Eagles, Aquila fasciata

Martínez

Zuberogoitia

Calvo

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Raptors often use a variety of materials to build their nests (natural, such as branches, but also non-natural objects), presumably due to their insulating properties, their suitability to advertise occupancy of the nest, and to decrease pathogen and parasite loads. The amount of branches used in a nest is an indicator of parental quality and is often associated with increased breeding success. However, in raptors where both sexes collaborate in nest construction, it is unclear whether the effort expended by males (taking the amount of material carried to the nest as the potential predictor) could constitute an honest signal of parental quality to female conspecifics. We examined data on sex, type of material brought to the nest, breeding experience, timing, and nest-building investment prior to egg-laying from 32 identifiable Bonelli’s Eagles (Aquila fasciata) during the pre-laying period to investigate the relative contribution of the sexes to the amount of nest material gathered. We asked: (1) whether the nest-building investment of males could provide information to the females about their quality; and (2) whether the amount of material delivered to the nest by the male was related to breeding success. Despite the considerable investment of males in nest-building during the pre-laying period, our results indicate that this effort is not a consistent indicator of male quality to the female. Therefore, male nest-building behaviour and investment by Bonelli’s Eagles cannot be considered as an extended expression of their phenotype (an extended phenotypic signal). Nest-building behaviour by males in the early and late stages of nest-building, and the fact that males were not significantly more active builders, are discussed in the contexts of signaling nest occupancy to conspecifics and competitors, the decrease of parasite loads, and the strengthening of the pair-bond during the pre-laying period.

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“…The weight of the transmitters was 48 and 50 g, respectively, and represented 1.66 to 2.86% (average = 2.25%, SD = 0.38%) of the body mass of eagles, below the 3% threshold established to avoid negative effects on behavior (Kenward, 2001;García et al 2021). The duty cycle of the transmitters was programmed to record a GPS location at five-minute intervals (López-López et al, 2021), from 1 h before sunrise to 1 h after sunset, year-round. Transmitters' data was retrieved, stored and managed by means of the Movebank online repository (http://www.movebank.org/).…”

Section: Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Home-range Size and Space Use of Territorial Bonelli’s Eagles (<i>Aquila Fasciata</i>) Tracked by High Resolution GPS/GSM Telemetry.

Morollón¹,

Urios²,

López‐López³

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

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The current advent of GPS/GSM technology, with high resolution GPS dataloggers available, provides information of the highest quality, which is certainly better than previous tracking methods such as ARGOS telemetry or conventional VHF ground-tracking. As a result, this has improved our knowledge of home-range behavior and spatial ecology of many species, including large raptors. In this paper, we use satellite telemetry information to assess the home-range size and the role of individual, year, sex and season (breeding or non-breeding season) in space use of the Bonelli’s eagle (Aquila fasciata). To this end, 51 territorial individuals (25 females and 26 males) were equipped with GPS/GSM transmitters and were tracked over a 7-year period (2015-2021) in eastern Spain. Overall, we recorded 4,791,080 fixes that were analyzed through kernel density methods (50%, 75% and 95% fixed kernels). Average home-range size according to the 95% kernel, 75% kernel and 50% kernel were 54.84 ± 20.78 km2, 24.30 ± 10.18 km2 and 11.17 ± 4.90 km2, respectively. The home-range size of individuals occupying the same territory was similar, mainly due to the cooperative hunting behavior exhibited by the species. No interannual differences in the home-range of the same territory were found, showing a strong territorial fidelity of the breeding pairs. Overall, females’ home-range size were smaller than males’ ones due to the decrease of activity in the breeding season due to laying, incubation and chicks attendance at nests. No seasonal variation in the general home-range size was found. Moreover, we found low neighbor overlap among territories (4,18% ± 3.06%) that evidences a high level of intraspecific competition in Bonelli's eagles. Finally, this study highlights the advantages of the use of accurate telemetry information to improve our understanding of the spatial ecology of the endangered Bonelli’s eagle, which ultimately will serve to better inform management actions for its conservation.

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Tri-axial accelerometry shows differences in energy expenditure and parental effort throughout the breeding season in long-lived raptors

Cited by 20 publications

References 69 publications

Effect of nest composition, experience and nest quality on nest-building behaviour in the Bonelli’s Eagle

Effect of nest composition, experience and nest quality on nest-building behaviour in the Bonelli’s Eagle

Nest-Building Effort is Not An Indicator of Male Quality In Bonelli’s Eagles, Aquila fasciata

Home-range Size and Space Use of Territorial Bonelli’s Eagles (<i>Aquila Fasciata</i>) Tracked by High Resolution GPS/GSM Telemetry.

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