Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Mark WhittinghamORCiD
Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.
Age-dependent breeding performance is arguably one of the best-documented phenomena in ornithology. The existence of age-related trends has major implications for life-history theory, but the proximate reasons for these patterns remain poorly understood. It has been proposed that poor breeding performance of young individuals might reflect lack of foraging skills.We investigated this possibility in a medium-sized, powerful raptor-the northern goshawk Accipiter gentilis. Male goshawks are responsible for providing their females and their offspring with food.We hypothesized that young males may generally show poor breeding performance or even delay breeding, because they lack the experience to hunt efficiently - especially, their principal avian prey, the feral pigeon Columba livia. Our study exploited a rare 'natural experiment', the expansion phase of an urban population, where intraspecific interference was negligible and many young males bred successfully. This enabled us to examine the improvement of foraging skills in a larger sample of young individuals, and in more controlled conditions than usually possible. Using data from individually identified male breeders, we show that, consistent with our hypothesis, the proportion of pigeons in the diet increased significantly with male age, for at least the first three years of life. Other studies have shown a parallel increase in productivity, and a positive effect of a pigeon-rich diet on brood size and nestling condition, stressing the potential fitness relevance of this prey species for goshawks. Our results suggest a causal link between patterns of age-dependence in foraging ecology and reproductive performance. Furthermore, our study is, to our knowledge, the first demonstration that prey choice of breeders, which might reflect individual hunting skills, is age-dependent in a raptor. © 2005 The Royal Society.
Author(s): Rutz C, Whittingham MJ, Newton I
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Year: 2006
Volume: 273
Issue: 1586
Pages: 579-586
ISSN (print): 0962-8436
ISSN (electronic): 1471-2970
Publisher: The Royal Society Publishing
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3353
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3353
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
