Eating More and Fighting Less: Social Foraging Is a Potential Advantage for Successful Expansion of Bird Source Populations

Biology(2022)

引用 0|浏览0
暂无评分
摘要
Animals can expand distributions in response to climatic and environmental changes, but the potential expansive ability of a source population is rarely evaluated using designed experiments. Group foraging can increase survival in new environments, but it also increases intraspecific competition. The trade-off between benefit and conflict needs to be determined. The expanding Light-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus sinensis was used as a model to test mechanisms promoting successful expansion. Social foraging and its advantages were evaluated using lab-designed feeding trials. Consuming novel foods was compared between bulbuls and a sympatric, nonexpansive relative species, the finchbill Spizixos semitorques, from native areas at both solitary and social levels. Bulbuls increased their eating times when transferred from solitary to group, whereas social context did not affect finchbills. Bulbuls were significantly more likely to eat with their companions than finchbills when in a group. Thus, exploring food resources in a bulbul source population was facilitated by social context, indicating that social foraging is an important means by which birds successfully expand and respond to environmental changes. This research increases understanding of successful expansion mechanisms and will consequently help predict invasive potentials of alien species.
更多
查看译文
关键词
distribution change,<i>Pycnonotus sinensis</i>,social foraging,expansion advantage,source population,competition
AI 理解论文
溯源树
样例
生成溯源树,研究论文发展脉络
Chat Paper
正在生成论文摘要