Effects of habitat quality on the number of alloparents and nest provisioning rates in a cooperatively breeding tropical passerine
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Publication Details
Author list: Wonkson P., Savini T., Gale G.A.
Publication year: 2012
Volume number: 51
Issue number: 8
Start page: 1464
End page: 1474
Number of pages: 11
ISSN: 1021-5506
eISSN: 1021-5506
Languages: English-Great Britain (EN-GB)
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Abstract
Habitat quality is likely to impact group size, provisioning behavior, and nesting success of cooperatively breeding birds; however, predicting the direction of these effects is particularly challenging. We investigated the influence of habitat quality on the number of alloparents in breeding groups and whether the presence or the number of alloparents influenced nest survival, provisioning rates, and individual breeder workloads in the Puff-throated Bulbul (Alophoixus pallidus), a tropical understory passerine. We used arthropod biomass as a proxy for habitat quality of 17 territories. We also analyzed data from 143 nests from 41 breeding groups during 3 breeding seasons to assess effects of alloparents on reproductive success. Habitat quality was not significantly correlated with the number of alloparents per group (p = 0.07), the number of fledgling produced (p = 0.08), or the provisioning rate (p = 0.99). The number of fledglings produced was also not significantly correlated with the number of alloparents (p = 0.71). Overall provisioning rates were marginally higher for groups with no alloparents compared to groups with alloparents (p = 0.055), but provisioning rates of breeders significantly declined with increases in alloparent numbers (p < 0.05). The lack of simple habitat effects on the number of alloparents may have been due to a complex suite of factors affecting both the production and dispersal of offspring and the recruitment of unrelated alloparents. The lack of a correlation between nesting success and alloparent numbers may have been due to the inability of adult birds to dissuade most predators in this system.
Keywords
Alloparents, Provisioning, Puff-throated Bulbul, Variable social structure
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