Date: May 12, 2017
Source: Universitaet Bielefeld
Nestling blue tits can
discriminate between the smell of other nestlings and adapt their begging
behaviour accordingly. This is the outcome of the latest study by Dr. Barbara
Caspers and Dr. Peter Korsten from Bielefeld University to be published today
on the 12th of May in the journal Functional Ecology.
In this subproject, Dr. Barbara
Caspers and Dr. Peter Korsten from Bielefeld University and Marta Rossi from
the University of Sussex in Brighton (Great Britain) examined the begging
behaviour of seven-day-old blue tit nestlings from a population near the Dutch
city of Groningen. 'Blue tit nestlings beg to obtain food from their parents
and may have to compete with as many as ten peers in the nest that are not all
necessarily full siblings,' explains Dr. Peter Korsten. In earlier studies of
other songbirds, it was already found that this competition intensifies when
nestlings are competing with non-kin. Then nestlings beg even more intensively
for food.
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