Johan Hultman
Professor
Female nutritional state affects the rate of male incubation feeding in the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca
Författare
Summary, in English
Male pied flycatches Ficedula hypoleuca regularly feed their mates during incubation. By experimentally supplying some females with extra food we studied how the female's nutritional state affected her incubation schedule and the rate at which her mate fed her. Females that received extra food spent more time on the nest and shorter periods away from it, compared with control females. This suggests that nest attentiveness is governed by the amount of energy available to the female. When females reccived extra food, males decreased their rate of incubation feeding. They also did so in response to increasing ambient temperatures, whereas incubation schedules were unaffected. We, therefore, conclude that our results support the "female nutrition hypothesis", i.e., that the food provided by the male constitutes a significant nutritional contribution to the incubating female.
Avdelning/ar
- Biodiversity
- Evolutionary ecology
- Biodiversitet och bevarandevetenskap
Publiceringsår
1989-06
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
417-420
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Volym
24
Issue
6
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Springer
Ämne
- Zoology
Aktiv
Published
Forskningsgrupp
- Biodiversity and Conservation Science
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0340-5443