Titre
Covariation between egg size and rearing condition determine offspring quality: an experiment with the Alpine swift
Type
article
Institution
Externe
Périodique
Auteur(s)
Bize, P.
Auteure/Auteur
Roulin, A.
Auteure/Auteur
Richner, H.
Auteure/Auteur
Liens vers les personnes
ISSN
0029-8549
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2002
Volume
132
Numéro
2
Première page
231
Dernière page/numéro d’article
234
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Langue
anglais
Résumé
A positive correlation between egg size, early growth and nestling survival has been frequently reported in the ornithological literature. Albeit of interest, most of these studies did not determine whether the relationship between egg size, early growth and nestling survival was confounded by the quality of rearing conditions. However, this is of importance in order to assess the extent to which a life-history trait like egg size causally affects fitness. In a colony of the alpine swift Apus melba, we cross-fostered complete clutches between nests to determine the relative contribution of egg size and rearing condition on nestling growth and survival. In foster nests, nestlings that hatched out of larger eggs were significantly heavier at birth and at the age of 10 days; at 25 days, however, the relationship was no longer significant. The likelihood of a chick surviving from birth to 25 days of age was not correlated with its original egg size, but with the size of the eggs laid by its foster parents. This experiment therefore lends support to the hypothesis that in the alpine swift the relationship between egg size and nestling growth and survival is mainly due to a covariation between egg size and parental care rather than to a direct contribution of egg size.
PID Serval
serval:BIB_D0AF5AE06303
Date de création
2008-01-24T16:42:42.861Z
Date de création dans IRIS
2025-05-20T23:55:30Z
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Nom
BIB_D0AF5AE06303.P001.pdf
Version du manuscrit
preprint
Taille
33.33 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
PID Serval
serval:BIB_D0AF5AE06303.P001
Somme de contrôle
(MD5):ff7a7fad42f0df2baab194b22cb3fd73