Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird
Evidence of sex-specific foraging in monomorphic seabirds is increasing though the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigate differential parental care as a mechanism for sex-specific foraging in monomorphic Common Murres (Uria aalge), where the male parent alone provisions the...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4648532 2023-05-15T17:22:47+02:00 Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird Burke, Chantelle M. Montevecchi, William A. Regular, Paul M. 2015-11-17 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648532/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26575646 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141190 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648532/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26575646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141190 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited CC-BY Research Article Text 2015 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141190 2015-11-29T01:37:39Z Evidence of sex-specific foraging in monomorphic seabirds is increasing though the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigate differential parental care as a mechanism for sex-specific foraging in monomorphic Common Murres (Uria aalge), where the male parent alone provisions the chick after colony departure. Using a combination of geolocation-immersion loggers and stable isotopes, we assess two hypotheses: the reproductive role specialization hypothesis and the energetic constraint hypothesis. We compare the foraging behavior of females (n = 15) and males (n = 9) during bi-parental at the colony, post-fledging male-only parental care and winter when parental care is absent. As predicted by the reproductive role specialization hypothesis, we found evidence of sex-specific foraging during post-fledging only, the stage with the greatest divergence in parental care roles. Single-parenting males spent almost twice as much time diving per day and foraged at lower quality prey patches relative to independent females. This implies a potential energetic constraint for males during the estimated 62.8 ± 8.9 days of offspring dependence at sea. Contrary to the predictions of the energetic constraint hypothesis, we found no evidence of sex-specific foraging during biparental care, suggesting that male parents did not forage for their own benefit before colony departure in anticipation of post-fledging energy constraints. We hypothesize that unpredictable prey conditions at Newfoundland colonies in recent years may limit male parental ability to allocate additional time and energy to self-feeding during biparental care, without compromising chick survival. Our findings support differential parental care as a mechanism for sex-specific foraging in monomorphic murres, and highlight the need to consider ecological context in the interpretation of sex-specific foraging behavior. Text Newfoundland Uria aalge uria PubMed Central (PMC) PLOS ONE 10 11 e0141190 |
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Research Article Burke, Chantelle M. Montevecchi, William A. Regular, Paul M. Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird |
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Research Article |
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Evidence of sex-specific foraging in monomorphic seabirds is increasing though the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigate differential parental care as a mechanism for sex-specific foraging in monomorphic Common Murres (Uria aalge), where the male parent alone provisions the chick after colony departure. Using a combination of geolocation-immersion loggers and stable isotopes, we assess two hypotheses: the reproductive role specialization hypothesis and the energetic constraint hypothesis. We compare the foraging behavior of females (n = 15) and males (n = 9) during bi-parental at the colony, post-fledging male-only parental care and winter when parental care is absent. As predicted by the reproductive role specialization hypothesis, we found evidence of sex-specific foraging during post-fledging only, the stage with the greatest divergence in parental care roles. Single-parenting males spent almost twice as much time diving per day and foraged at lower quality prey patches relative to independent females. This implies a potential energetic constraint for males during the estimated 62.8 ± 8.9 days of offspring dependence at sea. Contrary to the predictions of the energetic constraint hypothesis, we found no evidence of sex-specific foraging during biparental care, suggesting that male parents did not forage for their own benefit before colony departure in anticipation of post-fledging energy constraints. We hypothesize that unpredictable prey conditions at Newfoundland colonies in recent years may limit male parental ability to allocate additional time and energy to self-feeding during biparental care, without compromising chick survival. Our findings support differential parental care as a mechanism for sex-specific foraging in monomorphic murres, and highlight the need to consider ecological context in the interpretation of sex-specific foraging behavior. |
format |
Text |
author |
Burke, Chantelle M. Montevecchi, William A. Regular, Paul M. |
author_facet |
Burke, Chantelle M. Montevecchi, William A. Regular, Paul M. |
author_sort |
Burke, Chantelle M. |
title |
Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird |
title_short |
Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird |
title_full |
Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird |
title_fullStr |
Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird |
title_full_unstemmed |
Seasonal Variation in Parental Care Drives Sex-Specific Foraging by a Monomorphic Seabird |
title_sort |
seasonal variation in parental care drives sex-specific foraging by a monomorphic seabird |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648532/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26575646 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141190 |
genre |
Newfoundland Uria aalge uria |
genre_facet |
Newfoundland Uria aalge uria |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648532/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26575646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141190 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141190 |
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PLOS ONE |
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10 |
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