The Behavior of Parental Feeding and Offspring Begging by Parus varius
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    Abstract:

    Nestlings raised by parent compete for food or for better position in the nest to get the best chance of survive. Meanwhile, parents deliver food by the begging signal of nestlings. To investigate the behavior of parent-nestling we video recorded the position of parents and each nestlings, begging intensity, feeding frequency of each nestlings in 10 broods of the Parus varius from March to July in 2011. Our results showed that: (1) paternal and maternal adults took a different position when they deliver food. Paternal adults preferred to position near the nest entrance. In contrast, maternal adults changed their position, they stood far away from the nest entrance in the early stage and moved close to the entrance in the mid and late stage; (2) nestlings that were closer to parents begged more intensely and had a higher probability of receiving food; nestlings farther from parents begged less. Therefore, position of the nestlings had greatly influence on the food receiving; (3) females delivered food with a significantly higher frequency than males; (4) the begging intensity was varied at different nest stage, higher in the earlier and lower in the later period; (5) females showed no preference on the size of nestlings, whereas males preferentially provided food for the largest-sized nestlings. The food-distribution pattern in P.varius was determined by nestling behavior and body size, and parents also adjusted their positions to deliver food as the nestlings growing.

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LI Jing, YIN Jiang-Xia, YIN Li-Xian, LI Le, CHANG Peng, WAN Dong-Mei. 2012. The Behavior of Parental Feeding and Offspring Begging by Parus varius. Chinese Journal of Zoology, 47(4): 19-27.

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History
  • Received:January 16,2012
  • Revised:April 19,2012
  • Adopted:
  • Online: August 16,2012
  • Published: