We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
How did the Great Auk raise its young?
- Authors
HOUSTON, A. I.; WOOD, J.; WILKINSON, M.
- Abstract
The extant auks show three strategies of chick rearing – precocial (chicks leave the nest site when a few days old), intermediate (young raised to a mass of around 20% of adult mass) and semi-precocial (young raised to a mass of around 65% of adult mass). It is not known which strategy the extinct Great Auk used. In this paper, we investigate this issue by a novel combination of a time and energy budget model and phylogenetic comparison. The first approach indicates that for reasonable estimates of the equation parameters, the Great Auk could have followed an intermediate strategy. For a limited range of parameters, the Great Auk could have followed the semi-precocial strategy. Phylogenetic comparison shows that it is unlikely that the Great Auk followed a precocial strategy. The results suggest that the Great Auk followed an intermediate strategy as does its presumed closest extant relative the Razorbill.
- Subjects
GREAT auk; PHYLOGENY; ENERGY budget (Geophysics); SEA birds; RAZOR-billed auk
- Publication
Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2010, Vol 23, Issue 9, p1899
- ISSN
1010-061X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02047.x