Exploratory behaviour and foraging strategies in Mediterranean blue tits

[EN] Exploratory behaviour and foraging strategies in Mediterranean blue tits. Animal behaviour is potentially a mechanism of individual diet specialization. To explore this possibility we assessed exploratory behaviour (EB) and foraging data for a population of blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus. Our re...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Velasco, A.C., Ferrer, Esperanza S., Sanz, Juan José
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/281727
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/281727
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Behaviour
Diet specialization
Prey choice
Intersexual differences
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Exploratory behaviour and foraging strategies in Mediterranean blue tits. Animal behaviour is potentially a mechanism of individual diet specialization. To explore this possibility we assessed exploratory behaviour (EB) and foraging data for a population of blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus. Our results suggest that: 1) foraging differs between sexes; 2) the prey type selected by females depends on the provisioning rates of their mate, and adjustment of this prey-choice differs between EB phenotypes; and 3) foraging behaviour in males shows a trend towards linkage to their EB phenotype, with faster-exploring males obtaining marginally larger caterpillars but provisioning less frequently than slower-exploring males. Lastly, environmental variables contributed substantially to the diet composition of offspring. For this reason, we cannot suggest that EB dominates, but it may contribute to a diet specialization process in our study population.