Bright coloration of male blue manakin is not connected to higher rates of nest predation
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Bright coloration of male blue manakin is not connected to higher rates of nest predation Carlos Biagolini-Jr 1
&
Daniel Fernandes Perrella 2
Received: 20 May 2020 / Revised: 14 September 2020 / Accepted: 22 September 2020 # ISPA, CRL 2020
Abstract Nest predation is a determinant factor for the success of birds breeding especially for tropical species. However, it is not clear whether parental color plumage can be used as a visual cue for predators to locate nests. Using 3D-printed models, we tested if the color of the parent’s decoy can influence the predation of artificial birds’ nests. The models were painted with male and female blue manakin (Chiroxiphia caudata) color patterns. This is a small sexual dimorphic passerine, where the male is highly ornamented (conspicuous pattern) while the female shows a matte green color (cryptic pattern). Nest attendance is fully provided by females. We did not find evidence that predation rates differ among treatments (male vs. female coloration), even when controlling the effect of local vegetation density and canopy openness. Our findings do not corroborate recent studies that test similar ideas that used models of large body size birds in open habitats. In conclusion, we suggest that the blue manakin color patterns do not influence the probability of adults to be detected by predators. At natural nests, we expected that other cues (e.g., olfactory) should be more effective for the localization of blue manakin nest in Neotropical forests. Keywords Breeding . Life history . Nest predation . Predator behavior . Sexual selection
Introduction Nest predation is a determinant factor for bird breeding success, especially for tropical species (Skutch 1966). For example, it is well known that predation risk influenced the evolution of several breeding characteristics, including the choice of nest site (Eggers et al. 2006), brood size (Martin et al. 2000), incubation and nestling periods (Massaro et al. 2008), and nest and egg morphology (Bailey et al. 2015; Gómez et al. 2018; Mitrus and Drężek 2016; Stevens et al. 2017). At tropical regions, nest predation can occur at any time of day (Ribeiro-Silva et al. 2018), and the taxonomic diversity of predators is often high (Menezes and Marini 2017).
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-020-00352-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Carlos Biagolini-Jr [email protected] 1
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brazil
2
São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Consequently, this diverse assemblage of tropical predators has adopted several different strategies for detecting nests through visual (Blanco and Bertellotti 2002; Kilner 2006; Langen and Berg 2016), olfactory (Biagolini-Jr and dos Santos 2018; Mihailova et al. 2018; Perrella et al. 2020; Whelan et al. 1994), auditory (Briskie et al. 1999; Halupka 1998; Rice 1982), and thermal (Stake et al. 2005; Weatherhead and Blouin-Demers 200
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