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Parental conflict and blue egg coloration in a seabird

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Abstract

When both parents provide offspring care, equal sharing of costly parental duties may enhance reproductive success. This is crucial for longlived species, where increased parental effort in current reproduction profoundly affects future reproduction. Indication of reproductive value or willingness to invest in reproduction may promote matching responses by mates, thus reducing the conflict over care. In birds with biparental care, blue-green eggshell color may function as a signal of reproductive value that affects parental effort, as predicted by the signaling hypothesis of blue-green eggshell coloration. However, this hypothesis has not been explored during incubation, when the potential stimulus of egg color is present, and has been little studied in longlived birds. We experimentally studied if egg color affected incubation patterns in the blue-footed booby, a longlived species with biparental care and blue eggs. We exchanged fresh eggs between nests of the same laying date and recorded parental incubation effort on the following 4 days. Although egg color did not affect male effort, original eggshell color was correlated with pair matching in incubation. Exchanged eggshell color did not affect incubation patterns. This suggests that biliverdin-based egg coloration reflects female quality features that are associated with pair incubation effort or that blue-footed boobies mate assortatively high-quality pairs incubating more colorful clutches. An intriguing possibility is that egg coloration facilitates an equal sharing of incubation, the signal being functional only during a short period close to laying. Results also suggest that indication of reproductive value reduces the conflict over care.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript. We also thank Fabrice Dentressangle for help in the field and José C. Noguera for help with HPLC analysis. The study was supported by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (PAPIIT IN211406), Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (47599) of Mexico, and Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, MEC (CGL2006-10347-C02-01/BOS) of Spain. J.M. is grateful to the Association for the Study of Animal Behavior for a research grant that contributed to support the survey. J.M. and A.V. were supported, respectively, by postdoctoral and Ramón y Cajal fellowships from MEC. We thank the Armada de México, the staff from Parque Nacional Isla Isabel, and the fisherman from San Blas and Camichín for logistic support. SEMARNAT gave working permissions and approved the research. The study complies with the current laws in Spain. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

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  1. Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal, Facultade de Bioloxía, Universidade de Vigo, 36310, Vigo, Spain

    Judith Morales & Alberto Velando

  2. Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Laboratorio de Conducta Animal, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México DF, Mexico

    Roxana Torres

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  1. Judith Morales
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Correspondence to Judith Morales.

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Morales, J., Torres, R. & Velando, A. Parental conflict and blue egg coloration in a seabird. Naturwissenschaften 97, 173–180 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-009-0624-8

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