Surface temperatures of non-incubated eggs in great tits ( Parus major ) are strongly associated with ambient temperatur
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Surface temperatures of non-incubated eggs in great tits (Parus major) are strongly associated with ambient temperature Marcel M. Lambrechts 1 & Aude E. Caizergues 1 & Charles Perrier 2 & Anne Charmantier 1 & Samuel P. Caro 1 Received: 12 September 2018 / Revised: 17 June 2020 / Accepted: 19 June 2020 # ISB 2020
Abstract Temperature is one of the best investigated environmental factors in ecological life-history studies and is increasingly considered in the contexts of climate change and urbanization. In avian ecology, few studies have examined the associations between thermal dynamics in the nest environment and its neighbouring air. Here, we placed avian nests and non-incubated eggs inside nest boxes at various air temperatures that ranged from 0.3 to 33.1 °C, both in the field and in laboratory conditions. We measured how the design of the boxes, their compass orientation and their location in more or less urbanized environments affected the surface temperature of nests and eggs. We also assessed whether covering the eggs with lining material influenced their surface temperature. Overall, across all performed tests, we found that the surface temperature of nests and eggs strongly reflected the air temperature measured outside of the nest boxes. While the design of the nest boxes had little influence on the temperature of nests and eggs, orienting the nest boxes to the north or to the west significantly decreased their surface temperature. The presence of lining material also kept eggs slightly warmer when air temperatures were low. Altogether these results suggest that nonincubated eggs are not well protected against extreme air temperatures prior to the onset of incubation. From an evolutionary point of view, producers of ectotherm eggs need therefore to time egg-laying appropriately in order to avoid unfavourable thermal nest environments. Keywords Parus major . Ectotherm eggs . Nest temperature
Introduction Temperature is amongst the most extensively investigated environmental factors in ecological life-history studies, especially since the recent overwhelming increase of the biological consequences of climate change (IPCC Report 2014; Gaughan et al. 2017). Temperature is also a rising concern Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-01958-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Marcel M. Lambrechts [email protected] 1
Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive CEFE, UMR 5175, Campus CNRS, Université de Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, EPHE, 1919 route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France
2
Centre de Biologie pour la Gestion des Populations UMR CBGP, INRAE, CIRAD, IRD, Montpellier SupAgro, Univ Montpellier, Montpellier, France
in the field of urban ecology and urban evolutionary biology, with particular focus on the heat island effect of urbandwelling organisms (Bornstein 1968; Diamond and Martin 2020; Imhoff et al. 2010; Seress and Liker 2015). Long
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