Citation: Hanssen, S. A., K. E. Erikstad, H. Sandvik, T. Tveraa, and J. O. Bustnes (2023) Eyes on the future: buffering increased costs of incubation by abandoning offspring. Behavioral Ecology, 34, 189–196. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arac116
Key words: Body mass, cost of reproduction, parental effort, reproductive value, Somateria mollissima, trade-off.
Abstract: Life history theory states that the resources invested
in current reproduction must be traded off against resources needed for survival
and future reproduction. Long-lived organisms have a higher residual reproductive
value and are therefore expected to be sensitive to reproductive investments that
may reduce survival and future reproduction. Individuals within a population may
vary in phenotypic quality, experience, access to resources etc. This may affect
their optimal reproductive investment level. In this study we manipulated
reproductive costs by shortening and extending the incubation period in common
eiders Somateria mollissima without altering clutch size. Females whose
incubation time was prolonged experimentally, suffered higher mass loss and
increased clutch loss/nest desertion. These females were also more prone to
abandon their brood after hatching. Both clutch loss and brood abandonment
decreased with clutch size in all treatment categories, indicating higher
phenotypic quality and/or better access to resources for females producing
more eggs. However, although females with prolonged incubation were lighter
at hatching, their return rate and breeding performance in the following year
were unaffected. These results show that individual quality as expressed through
clutch size and body mass is affecting current reproductive investment level as
well as future survival and breeding performance. The results also show that
individual birds are sensitive to changes in their own condition, and when
reproductive effort is approaching a level where survival or future survival
may be compromised, they respond by terminating their current reproductive
attempt.
Full text: © 2022 the authors. If you accept (i) the conditions specified in the Oxford University Press Standard Publication Model, and (ii) that printouts have to be made on recycled paper, you may download the article here (pdf, 0.4 MB).
Supplementary material: The Supplementary Tables S1–S4 may be downloaded here (pdf, 0.2 MB). The data used in the analyses are available from the Dryad Digital Repository at doi:10.5061/dryad.866t1g1tv.