The effects of temperature on offspring provisioning in a cooperative breeder

By Elizabeth M. Wiley, A. Ridley. 2016

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

While most current predictive models agree that the climate is changing, it is not yet clear what impact these changes will have on animal populations. It is vital to determine the potential consequences in order to develop future management and conservation strategies. Climate change may impact population stability by prompting changes in breeding behaviour. For example, if above-average temperatures negatively affect adult body condition, this will increase the cost of parental care. Theory suggests that under this scenario, individuals may trade off their own body condition and survival against that of their young. Despite convincing evidence that this parental care trade-off exists in nature, the potential impact of climate change on parental investment strategies has rarely been investigated. In cooperatively breeding species, group-living adults can gain group size benefits, such as assistance with raising young. These benefits may mediate the effects of climate change on adult condition and subsequent investment in young. Here, we investigated the extent to which high temperatures and rainfall variation affect (1) adult provisioning rates to dependent nestlings, (2) offspring development and (3) the cost of offspring care in the cooperatively breeding pied babbler, Turdoides bicolor . We found that overall, adults provisioned young significantly less on hot days. However, this pattern was affected by rank: dominant individuals provisioned significantly less while subordinates did not. Offspring development was negatively affected by heatwave events, suggesting that young suffer from reduced investment on hot days. However, there was no evidence that the cost of provisioning young increased during heatwave periods, perhaps owing to the reduction in investment by adults. This study provides some of the first evidence that higher temperatures affect investment decisions in cooperative breeders and that dominant and subordinate individuals respond differently to this stressor.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/11155e064002665232f37697a00928840927c2fa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecological Modeling

1. S. Williams
2. A. Hoffmann
3. N. Andrew
4. D. Bergstrom
5. L. Joseph
6. M. McGeoch
7. Dirk Maes
8. H. Van Dyck

In Ecology

1. D. Bergstrom
2. S. Williams
3. A. Hoffmann
4. N. Andrew
5. L. Joseph
6. J. Gardner
7. M. McGeoch
8. Peter Convey

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. A. Hoffmann
2. N. Andrew
3. L. Joseph
4. J. Gardner
5. M. McGeoch
6. John S. Terblanche
7. Kevin J. Gaston

Citations in the corpus

• A review of factors to consider when using camera traps to study animal behavior to inform wildlife ecology and conservation (2020, unknown): “Behavioral change can serve as an early warning sign for demographic impacts (Wiley & Ridley, 2016), shed light on species adaptations to changing environments (Rabaiotti & Woodroffe, 2019), and highlight potential conservation interventions (Anthony & Blumstein, 2000).”
• Impacts of recent climate change on terrestrial flora and fauna: Some emerging Australian examples (2018, background): “There are consequences for nestling growth and development, and thus offspring body size (Cunningham et al. 2013; Wiley & Ridley 2016).”