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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Fecal-Sac Ingestion By Spotted Towhees, Jenny E. Mckay, Michael T. Murphy, Sarah Bartos Smith, Jennifer K. Richardson
Fecal-Sac Ingestion By Spotted Towhees, Jenny E. Mckay, Michael T. Murphy, Sarah Bartos Smith, Jennifer K. Richardson
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Altricial nestlings encase excrement in fecal sacs that parents remove by either ingesting them or transporting them away from the nest. Ingestion may allow energetically or nutritionally deprived parents to recapture energy or nutrients that might be lost because of nestlings' inefficient digestion (the "parental-nutrition hypothesis"), but ingestion may also permit parents to avoid flights from the nest that interfere with parental care (e.g., brooding young; the "economic-disposal hypothesis"). We used a hypothetico-deductive approach to test the two hypotheses' ability to account for fecal-sac ingestion by the Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus). We confirmed the parental-nutrition hypothesis' predictions that …
Lifetime Reproductive Success Of Female Eastern Kingbirds (Tyrannus Tyrannus): Influence Of Lifespan, Nest Predation And Body Size, Michael T. Murphy
Lifetime Reproductive Success Of Female Eastern Kingbirds (Tyrannus Tyrannus): Influence Of Lifespan, Nest Predation And Body Size, Michael T. Murphy
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
I report on the lifetime reproductive success (LRS) of female Eastern Kingbirds (Tyrannus tyrannus) in central New York. I investigated the major correlates of LRS and specifi cally tested the hypothesis that small body size yields reproductive benefi ts. Lifetime reproductive success varied widely: 15–20% of females failed to fledge young over their life, whereas 50% of young were fledged by 20% of females. Female lifespan varied between one and eight years, and females that died after one breeding season tended to be smaller-bodied than long-lived females (≥2 seasons). I therefore conducted analyses of LRS for the entire sample and …
High Frequency Of Extra-Pair Paternity In Eastern Kingbirds, Diane L. Rowe, Michael T. Murphy, Robert C. Fleischer, Paul G. Wolf
High Frequency Of Extra-Pair Paternity In Eastern Kingbirds, Diane L. Rowe, Michael T. Murphy, Robert C. Fleischer, Paul G. Wolf
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Genetic parentage in the socially monogamous and territorial Eastern Kingbird( Tyrannust tyrannus) was examined in a central New York population by multilocus DNA fingerprinting. Extra-pair young were identified in 60% (12 of 20) of nests. Of the 64 nestlings profiled, 42% were sired by extra-pair males, but no cases of conspecific brood parasitism were detected. These results are markedly different from a previous electrophoretic study of the same species in a Michigan population, which reported 39% of nestlings were unrelated to one (typically the mother, quasiparasitismo)r both (conspecificb roodp arasitism) of the putative parents. In the New York population, extra-pairp …