Parent–offspring interactions in food provisioning of Manx shearwaters: implications for nestling obesity

Procellariiform seabirds such as the Manx shearwaterPuffinus puffinus, rear only one chick at a time but may breed many times in their lives; parents should thus limit food delivery to the chick in keeping with the balance between current and future reproductive output. Yet procellariiform chicks ac...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Animal behaviour 1999-03, Vol.57 (3), p.627-631
Main Authors: HAMER, K.C., LYNNES, A.S., HILL, J.K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animal ethology
Aves
Biological and medical sciences
Birds
Food
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Obesity
Parents & parenting
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Puffinus puffinus
Vertebrata
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Procellariiform seabirds such as the Manx shearwaterPuffinus puffinus, rear only one chick at a time but may breed many times in their lives; parents should thus limit food delivery to the chick in keeping with the balance between current and future reproductive output. Yet procellariiform chicks accumulate large quantities of lipid, which may provide a buffer against pronounced and unpredictable variation in food provisioning, resulting in part from an inability of parents to regulate food supply to the nest. We switched chicks between nests to examine the roles of parents and offspring in controlling food delivery. The serial autocorrelation in age-specific body masses for unmanipulated chicks decreased from 0.61 (P
ISSN:0003-3472
1095-8282
DOI:10.1006/anbe.1998.0994