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Food allocation rules vary with age and experience in a cooperatively breeding parrot

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Abstract

Although it is known that parents can differ in their optimal resource allocation to offspring in size-structured broods, the mechanisms determining differences in allocation rules of carers are not yet clarified. In cooperatively breeding species, breeders and non-reproductive helpers often differ in their fitness payoffs of providing care and in their breeding experience. Cooperative breeders thus provide an appropriate system to examine two hypotheses originally proposed to explain differences in food allocation among parents: (i) food allocation between carers differs because of the distinct cost-benefit ratio of selective feeding (i.e. breeders and helpers are expected to differ in food allocation) and (ii) carers differ in their ability to feed selectively (i.e. differences in food allocation are expected between experienced adults and inexperienced yearlings). We compared feeding rates with which breeders, old helpers and yearling helpers provisioned nestlings of different hatching rank. The influence of experience upon food allocation was further assessed by comparing food allocation of yearlings early and late during nesting. We show that allocation rules differ between age classes because breeders and old helpers fed the youngest chicks most, whereas yearlings showed the opposite pattern. The role of experience was supported by the fact that yearlings adjusted food allocation to that observed in experienced adults during the breeding season. We thus suggest that food allocation in El Oro parakeets depends either on differential skills of adults to transfer food to the youngest chick or on their ability to recognize nestling needs.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to all field assistants for their great help in data acquisition. We are grateful to Ivan Samuels, Winifred Frick and Paul Heady who provided us with the camera equipment and to the team of the Fundacíon Jocotoco (FJ) for their help and support during field work at the Buenaventura reserve. We thank Tore Slagsvold, Donald Brightsmith and Peter Bednekoff for their helpful comments on the manuscript. NK was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, HMS by the DFG (Scha 1008/7-1). We are thankful to the Loro Parque Fundacíon for their financial support of the entire project.

Ethical standards

Permission to conduct field work (no. 012–09 IC-FAU-DNB/MA; 002-IC-FAN-DPO/MAE) and for exportation of samples (no. 0060553, 0001175 and 04836) was granted by the Ministerio del Ambiente and by the Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería, Acuacultura y Pesca, Ecuador.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Ecology and Evolution, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Hauptstr. 1, D-79104, Freiburg, Germany

    Nadine Klauke, Jeroen Jansen, Jos Kramer & H. Martin Schaefer

Authors
  1. Nadine Klauke
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  2. Jeroen Jansen
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  3. Jos Kramer
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  4. H. Martin Schaefer
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Correspondence to Nadine Klauke.

Additional information

Communicated by P. A. Bednekoff

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Klauke, N., Jansen, J., Kramer, J. et al. Food allocation rules vary with age and experience in a cooperatively breeding parrot. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 68, 1037–1047 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1716-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1716-9

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