Citation: Erikstad, K. E., H. Sandvik, P. Fauchald, and T. Tveraa (2009) Short- and long-term consequences of reproductive decisions: an experimental study in the puffin. Ecology (Washington, D. C.), 90, 3197–3208.
doi: 10.1890/08-1778.1 [what’s a doi?].
Key words: Cost of reproduction, Fratercula arctica, individual quality, manipulation experiment, parental effort, state-dependent breeding investment.
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study was to inspect the response of the
Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) to an experimental manipulation of the investment
needed to successfully raise an offspring. We achieved this by replacing an old offspring with
a younger chick, and vice versa, thereby prolonging and shortening the chick-rearing period.
To examine any costs of reproduction we then followed the breeding success, the recruitment of
young to the population, and the survival of parents for 11 years following the manipulation.
Parents in the prolonged and shortened category had a lower breeding success than controls
mainly because parents deserted their chick shortly after swapping. Among those that raised
their chick, the age and body mass of foster chicks at fledging were the same in all three
categories even though the parents had raised chicks for different lengths of time. The
recruitment of young to the breeding population was high and independent of treatment.
Likewise, the survival of adults was independent of treatment. For the 11 years after the
experiment, however, the resighting rate of those that deserted their chick was clearly lower
than among those that accepted their foster chick. For parents that raised their foster chick,
the survival to the following year was positively related to their body mass. The results
support the hypothesis that puffins have a highly flexible parental investment, which they
adjust according to their own individual quality and the survival prospects of the chick.
Full text: © 2009 Ecological Society of America. If you accept (i) that further reproduction, and all further use other than for personal research, is subject to permission from the publisher (Ecological Society of America), and (ii) that printouts have to be made on recycled paper, you may download the article here (pdf, 0.3 MB).
Supplementary material: A table summarising the capture–mark–recapture models is available in the Ecological Archives E090-227.