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- Title
Is obligate siblicidal aggression food sensitive?
- Authors
Osorno, José Luis; Drummond, Hugh
- Abstract
In avian species whose chicks show facultative siblicide, attacks increase with food deprivation. In species that show obligate siblicide, this causal relationship is not expected, but no test has been made. When we composed artificial pairs of young brown boobies, Sula leucogaster (an obligately siblicidal species), and supplied variable amounts of food to the older nestlings in each pair, food ingestion was related to the most intense form of attack, pushes, which can cause death by expelling the broodmate from the nest. The less food an older nestling ingested, the more time it spent active and the greater its rate and absolute frequency of pushes, and the more often it expelled its nestmate. Hence, deficient food provision to older nestlings could precipitate siblicidal expulsion of broodmates. Younger nestmates were aggressive too, and the more they were pushed and expelled, the more they pecked. Aggression of senior brown-booby broodmates may be flexible and food sensitive in order to optimize the timing of siblicide or to make siblicide weakly facultative.
- Subjects
BROWN booby; ANIMAL aggression; ANIMAL feeding behavior; INGESTION; ANIMAL behavior; BOOBIES (Birds)
- Publication
Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, 2003, Vol 54, Issue 6, p547
- ISSN
0340-5443
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00265-003-0667-3