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Exploration behavior and parental effort in wild great tits: partners matter

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Abstract

The extended pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis suggests that variation in boldness-like behaviors has co-evolved with variation in life-history strategies within populations, yet both theoretically driven experiments and evidence for phenotypic correlations between boldness-like behaviors and reproduction-related activities are scarce. Here we test the prediction that more exploratory individuals should be willing to provide more effort into current reproduction than less exploratory ones by investigating the association between exploration behavior and parental effort in wild great tits (Parus major). To this end, we assessed exploration behavior following a standardized assay. Then, we estimated individual willingness to provide parental effort into brood provisioning as (1) individual increase in nest visit rate after the brood had been artificially enlarged and (2) individual latency to return to the nest after this manipulation. Fast male explorers were quicker than slow explorers to return to the nest after the manipulation. Males paired with a partner of similar exploration score—either a fast or slow female explorer —increased their nest visit rate more than males paired with a partner of dissimilar exploration score. The relationship between exploration and parental effort then depended on one’s partner’s behavior. Our test thus provides only partial support for the extended POLS hypothesis and highlights the potential importance of the social environment in shaping the relationship between boldness-like behaviors and fitness-maximizing traits.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Yannick Auclair, Vincent Careau, FX Dechaume-Moncharmont, Niels Dingemanse, Claire Doutrelant, Geert Eens, Wolfgang Forstmeier, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Carsten Lucass, Karine Monceau, Wendt Müller, Kees van Oers, Samantha Patrick, Denis Réale, and Peter Scheys for their help or their comments at any stage of this study. Financial support was provided by the University of Antwerp (TOPBOF) and FWO-Flanders (Research Projects G.0130.07 and G.0280.10) to ME and RP.

Ethical standards

This study was approved by the ethical committee of the University of Antwerp (ID number 2011-31), and it was performed in accordance with Belgian and Flemish laws. The Belgian Royal Institute for Natural Sciences (Koninklijk Belgisch Instituut voor Natuurwetenschappen) provided ringing licences for authors and technical personnel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology—Ethology, University of Antwerp, Drie Eiken Campus, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610, Wilrijk, Antwerp, Belgium

    Morgan David, Rianne Pinxten, Tine Martens & Marcel Eens

  2. Department of Instructional and Educational Sciences, Research Unit Didactica, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Rianne Pinxten

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  1. Morgan David
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  2. Rianne Pinxten
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  3. Tine Martens
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  4. Marcel Eens
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Correspondence to Morgan David.

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Communicated by S. Pruett-Jones

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David, M., Pinxten, R., Martens, T. et al. Exploration behavior and parental effort in wild great tits: partners matter. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 69, 1085–1095 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1921-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1921-1

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