Stimuli for nestling begging in blue tits : hungry nestlings are less discriminating.

Dickens, Megan and Hartley, Ian R. (2007) Stimuli for nestling begging in blue tits : hungry nestlings are less discriminating. Journal of Avian Biology, 38 (4). pp. 421-426. ISSN 0908-8857

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Abstract

In altricial birds, nestlings usually respond to the sound and appearance of the provisioning adults by begging for food when the adults arrive at the nest. Nestlings can, however, also beg incorrectly on hearing misleading sounds in the environment and fail to beg when the adult arrives. This study uses the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus to test the hypotheses that nestling begging strategies are influenced by the reliability of the stimulus to beg, and that nestling motivational state affects the response to different stimuli. Here, we show experimentally that nestling hunger strongly influences the response to stimuli that vary in their reliability. While hunger increases begging rate, it also increases the likelihood that nestlings will beg when the parent is absent. This is in agreement with both the predictions of signal detection theory and recent empirical work on other species. We found, however, no evidence that age-related perceptual constraints influence the begging response of ten day old nestlings to different stimuli.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Avian Biology
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Subjects:
?? ecology, evolution, behavior and systematicsanimal science and zoologyqh301 biology ??
ID Code:
9146
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
28 May 2008 12:46
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jul 2024 11:37