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Learning during competitive positioning in the nest: do nestlings use ideal free ‘foraging’ tactics?

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Abstract

Begging behaviour of nestling birds may involve more than a simple, honest source of information for parents to use in provisioning. Many aspects of begging behaviour relate instead to sibling competition for food items within the nest, and we might expect evidence of adaptive learning and behavioural adjustment in response to experience of the competitive environment. In this study, we consider begging in different locations within the nest as analogous to foraging in different patches, varying in food availability. Using hand-feeding trials, we created zones of differing profitability within an artificial nest by adjusting either the prey size or number of items delivered, and allowed only indirect competition between pairs of southern grey shrike (Lanius meridionalis) nestlings. Nestlings demonstrated the ability to detect differences in zone profitability and position themselves accordingly. By the end of both the prey size and delivery rate trials nestlings had increased the amount of time spent in the high quality zone. Such movement in response to differences in load quality, as well as frequency, demonstrates the ability of nestlings to learn about their environment and to facultatively adjust their begging in order to maximise energetic rewards.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Mitrani Centre for Desert Ecology, Hazeva Research and Development Centre (HRDC), Hazeva Field School, Berry Pinshow, Sasha Dall and Dror Hawlena for logistical support, Kate Lessells for access to an unpublished MS and Arnon Lotem and anonymous reviewers for comments on a previous version of the paper. A.E.B. was funded by NERC PhD Studentship No. GT4/97/288/TS. This work was carried out under license and according to ethical guidelines at HRDC in Israel

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2UW, UK

    Amber E. Budden & Jonathan Wright

  2. Present address: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California Berkeley, 3101 Valley Life Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Amber E. Budden

  3. Present address: Institute of Biology, Norwegian University for Science & Technology (NTNU), Realfagbygget, Høgskoleringen 5, Trondheim, N-7491, Norway

    Jonathan Wright

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  1. Amber E. Budden
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  2. Jonathan Wright
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Correspondence to Amber E. Budden.

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Communicated by M. Soler

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Budden, A.E., Wright, J. Learning during competitive positioning in the nest: do nestlings use ideal free ‘foraging’ tactics?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 58, 227–236 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0940-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0940-8

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