Negotiation over offspring care?--a positive response to partner-provisioning rate in great tits
Abstract
Game theoretical models of biparental care predict that a change in work rate by one parent should be met by incomplete compensation by its partner. However, in empirical studies on biparental birds, there has been some inconsistency in the direction and extent of the response, and the mechanism behind it has so far been unclear. Parents could be responding directly to partner work rate or indirectly via chick begging. In this study of great tits (Parus major), the work rate of one parent was increased experimentally by augmenting the begging of the chicks with playback of extra begging calls whenever the parent visited the nest. The playback had no effect on the chicks' begging behavior, so any change in the focal parent's behavior was a direct response to its partner's work rate over a short timescale. An experimental increase in care by either male or female parent led to an increase (to a lesser extent) in the work rate of its partner, which is counter to the decrease predicted by partial compensation models. This seemingly paradoxical result may reflect decisions made exclusively over a short timescale and is in keeping with new theoretical work, which takes into account the information content of partner work rates. Copyright 2006.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by International Society for Behavioral Ecology in its journal Behavioral Ecology.
Volume (Year): 17 (2006)
Issue (Month): 1 (January)
Pages: 6-12
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Fax: 01865 267 985
Email:
Web page: http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/
Order Information:
Web: http://www.oup.co.uk/journals
Related research
Keywords: begging; great tit; matching; parental care; partial compensation; playback; provisioning rate;References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:17:y:2006:i:1:p:6-12For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Oxford University Press) or (Christopher F. Baum).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.