Begging behavior influenced food allocation on Creamy-bellied Thrush (Turdus amaurochalinus) nestlings

GARRIDO CORIA, PAULA; ASTIÉ, ANDREA ALEJANDRA

WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY

WILSON ORNITHOLOGICAL SOC

Año: 2022

1559-4491

The way parents allocate food among the nestlings in a brood has been subject ofseveral studies in recent years. Previous works have shown that parents sometimesdecide who is going to receive the food according to food availability, nestlings?begging behavior, or the position of a chick in the nest. In this work, we studied thecharacteristics of the nestling that receive food first in nests with and withoutexperimental food reinforcement in the Creamy-bellied Thrush (Turdusamaurochalinus). Every time parents arrived at the nest, we recorded which of thenestlings received food and its characteristics related to its siblings: size, position, andbegging intensity. We found that food allocation was not explained by treatment, size,age, or position of nestlings. Our results also showed that there were no differences innestling survival among control and experimental nests. However, parentspreferentially fed the chick that demanded food first and raised the head higher than itssiblings.