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

GARRIDO CORIA, PAULA SABRINA; ASTIÉ, ANDREA A

WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY

WILSON ORNITHOLOGICAL SOC

Año: 2022

1559-4491

ABSTRACT?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 sometimes decide who isgoing to receive the food according to food availability, nestlings? begging behavior, or theposition of a chick in the nest. In this work, we studied the characteristics of the nestling thatreceive food first in nests with and without experimental food reinforcement in the Creamy-bellied Thrush (Turdus amaurochalinus). Every time parents arrive to the nest, we recordedwhich of the nestlings received food and its characteristics related to the nestmates: size,position, and begging 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, parents preferentially fed thechick that demanded food first and raised the head higher than its siblings.