- Department of Behavioural Ecology & Evolutionary Genetics
Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Eberhard-Gwinner-Strasse 7
82319 Seewiesen, Germany - +49 (0)8157-932-264
- Behavioral Ecology, Animal Behavior, Biological Rhythms, Parental Behavior, Cooperation and Conflict, Sexual Selection, and 16 moreGame Theory, Biology, Migration, Sperm Competition, Avian Incubation, Eggshell Colouration, Egg Shell Pigmentation, Avian Ecology, Sleep & Circadian Rhythms, Circadian Rhythms, Birds (Ecology), Waders, Shorebirds, Rhythm, Rhythmanalysis, and Biorhythmsedit
- Behavioural ecologists and ornithologists curious about biorhythms, especially those found in the wild and during reproduction. Passionate about the shorebirds and Arctic.edit
Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explanation for variation among results is... more
Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explanation for variation among results is differences among researchers in the decisions they make regarding statistical analyses. A growing array of studies has explored this analytical variability in different (mostly social science) fields, and has found substantial variability among results, despite analysts having the same data and research question. We implemented an analogous study in ecology and evolutionary biology, fields in which there have been no empirical exploration of the variation in effect sizes or model predictions generated by the analytical decisions of different researchers. We used two unpublished datasets, one from evolutionary ecology (blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus, to compare sibling number and nestling growth) and one from conservation ecology (Eucalyptus, to compa...
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Research Interests: Business, Marketing, Communication, Nonprofit Studies, Czech, and 15 moreRegulation, Marketing Research, Management Nonprofit, Civic Engagement, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Management, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Civil Society, Nonprofit Organizations, Profitability, Design Methodology, Policy formulation, Interest groups in EU, Marketing Mix, and Public Sector Marketing
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically altered human activities, potentially relieving human pressures on urban-dwelling animals. Here, we evaluated whether birds from five cities in five countries (Czech... more
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically altered human activities, potentially relieving human pressures on urban-dwelling animals. Here, we evaluated whether birds from five cities in five countries (Czech Republic – Prague, Finland – Rovaniemi, Hungary – Budapest, Poland – Poznan, and Australia – Melbourne) changed their tolerance towards human presence (measured as flight initiation distance) during the COVID-19 shutdowns. We collected 6369 flight initiation distance estimates for 147 bird species and found that birds tolerated approaching humans to a similar level before and during the COVID-19 shutdowns. Moreover, during the shutdowns, bird escape behaviour did not consistently change with the level of governmental restrictions (measured as the stringency index). Hence, our results indicate that birds do not flexibly and quickly adjust their escape behaviour to the reduced human presence; in other words, the breeding populations of urban birds examined ...
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The process of literature investigation
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The ruff sandpiperCalidris pugnaxis a Palearctic lekking shorebird with three genetic morphs determined by an autosomal inversion. Male morphs differ strikingly in body size, ornaments, endocrinology and mating behavior. Aggressive... more
The ruff sandpiperCalidris pugnaxis a Palearctic lekking shorebird with three genetic morphs determined by an autosomal inversion. Male morphs differ strikingly in body size, ornaments, endocrinology and mating behavior. Aggressive Independents represent the ancestral haplotype, semi-cooperative Satellites and female-mimicking Faeders the inverted haplotypes. Since one inversion breakpoint is homozygous lethal, the inverted haplotypes (Satellite and Faeder) cannot recombine and are expected to accumulate mutations. The inversion regions also harbor genes involved in spermatogenesis. However, it is unknown whether the genetic difference between the morphs also translate into differences in sperm traits. Here, we use a captive-bred population of ruffs to compare sperm velocity and morphology among the morphs. Faeder sperm moved the slowest, which is in line with expectations from mutation accumulation and the idea that Faeders might fare worse than Satellites, as Satellite haplotype a...
The data supporting the results, computer code used to generate the results, and the Supplementary Figures and Tables of this study.
Data for Fig 1B: Strength of assortative mating for size as a function of data source
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Unpublished data (nine long-term field studies): Data where we combined the information from data S1_Data and S2_Dat
DATASET
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In biparental species, parents may be in conflict over how much they invest into their offspring. To understand this conflict, parental care needs to be accurately measured, something rarely done. Here, we quantitatively describe the... more
In biparental species, parents may be in conflict over how much they invest into their offspring. To understand this conflict, parental care needs to be accurately measured, something rarely done. Here, we quantitatively describe the outcome of parental conflict in terms of quality, amount and timing of incubation throughout the 21 day incubation period in a population of semipalmated sandpipers (Calidris pusilla) breeding under continuous daylight in the High Arctic. Incubation quality, measured by egg temperature and incubation constancy, showed no marked difference between the sexes. The amount of incubation, measured as length of incubation bouts, was on average 51 min longer per bout for females (11.5 h) than for males (10.7 h), at first glance suggesting that females invested more than males. However, this difference may have been offset by sex-differences in the timing of incubation; females were more often off-nest during the warmer period of the day, when foraging conditions were presumably better. Overall, the daily timing of incubation shifted over the incubation period (e. g., for female incubation from ‘evening-night’ to ‘night-morning’) and over the season, but varied considerably among pairs. At one extreme, pairs shared the amount of incubation equally, but one parent always incubated during the colder part of the day; at the other extreme, pairs shifted the start of incubation bouts between days so that each parent experienced similar conditions across the incubation period. Our results highlight how the simultaneous consideration of different aspects of care across time allows sex-specific investment to be more accurately quantified
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Sex-bias in breeding dispersal is considered the norm in many taxa, and the magnitude and direction of such sex-bias is expected to correlate with the social mating system. We used local return rates in shorebirds as an index of breeding... more
Sex-bias in breeding dispersal is considered the norm in many taxa, and the magnitude and direction of such sex-bias is expected to correlate with the social mating system. We used local return rates in shorebirds as an index of breeding site fidelity, and hence as an estimate of the propensity for breeding dispersal, and tested whether variation in site fidelity and in sex-bias in site fidelity relates to the mating system. Among 111 populations of 49 species, annual return rates to a breeding site varied between 0% and 100%. After controlling for body size (linked to survival) and other confounding factors, monogamous species showed higher breeding site fidelity compared with polyandrous and polygynous species. Overall, there was a strong male bias in return rates, but the sex-bias in return rate was independent of the mating system and did not covary with the extent of sexual size dimorphism. Our results bolster earlier findings that the sex-biased dispersal is weakly linked to t...
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Unpublished data (nine long-term field studies): All available records of morphological traits which covered more than 95% of individuals included in S1_Data.This dataset also includes the location where the individual was caught, the... more
Unpublished data (nine long-term field studies): All available records of morphological traits which covered more than 95% of individuals included in S1_Data.This dataset also includes the location where the individual was caught, the date of catching, and the observer who measured the individua
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Annotated GPS-tracking data used to create Figure 2 (Example of daily foraging rhythms in three Montagu’s Harriers). One file is included per bird. The zip files includes a word file describing the different columns
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Sex-bias in breeding dispersal is considered the norm in many taxa, and the magnitude and direction of such sex-bias is expected to correlate with the social mating system. We used local return rates in shorebirds as an index of breeding... more
Sex-bias in breeding dispersal is considered the norm in many taxa, and the magnitude and direction of such sex-bias is expected to correlate with the social mating system. We used local return rates in shorebirds as an index of breeding site fidelity, and hence as an estimate of the propensity for breeding dispersal, and tested whether variation in site fidelity and in sex-bias in site fidelity relates to the mating system. Among 111 populations of 49 species, annual return rates to a breeding site varied between 0–100%. After controlling for body size (linked to survival) and other confounding factors, monogamous species showed higher breeding site fidelity compared to polyandrous and polygynous species. Overall, there was a strong male bias in return rates, but the sex-bias in return rate was independent of the mating system and did not covary with the extent of sexual size dimorphism. Our results bolster earlier findings that the sex-biased dispersal is weakly linked to the mati...
Data for Fig 2: Strength of assortative mating for body size in relation to sample size
Models for the unpublished data (Fig 1C): Excel spreadsheet contains 6 separate sheets; each sheet corresponds to a model to estimate the strength of assortative mating
Published data (Fig 1A): Excel spreadsheet containing two separate sheets with data from literature: 1) data extracted from the publications and 2) the original references
Unpublished data (nine long-term field studies): All the pairs that have been identified across the nine studies where both pair members have at least one morphological record, including repeated records from different years. This dataset... more
Unpublished data (nine long-term field studies): All the pairs that have been identified across the nine studies where both pair members have at least one morphological record, including repeated records from different years. This dataset also includes latitude and longitude of the nest site (Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection, units = meters) and year and, if available, the putative date of the first egg
It is often claimed that pair bonds preferentially form between individuals that resemble one another. Such assortative mating appears to be widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Yet it is unclear whether the apparent ubiquity of... more
It is often claimed that pair bonds preferentially form between individuals that resemble one another. Such assortative mating appears to be widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Yet it is unclear whether the apparent ubiquity of assortative mating arises primarily from mate choice (‘like attracts like’) which can be constrained by same-sex competition for mates, from spatial or temporal separation, or from observer, reporting, publication or search bias. Here, based on a conventional literature search, we find compelling meta-analytical evidence for size-assortative mating in birds (r = 0.178, 95% CI: 0.142 – 0.215, 83 species, 35,591 pairs). However, our analyses reveal that this effect vanishes gradually with increased control of confounding factors. Specifically, the effect size decreased by 42% when we used unpublished data from nine long-term field studies, i.e. data free of reporting and publication bias (r = 0.103, 95% CI: 0.074 – 0.132, eight species, 16,611 pairs). Moreover, in those data assortative mating effectively disappeared when both partners were measured by independent observers or separately in space and time (mean r = 0.018, 95% CI: -0.016 – 0.057). Likewise, we also found no evidence for assortative mating in a direct experimental test for mutual mate choice in captive populations of zebra finches (r = -0.020, 95% CI: -0.148 – 0.107, 1,414 pairs). These results highlight the importance of unpublished data in generating unbiased meta-analytical conclusions, and suggest that the apparent ubiquity of assortative mating reported in the literature is overestimated and may not be driven by mate choice or mating competition for preferred mates
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Marine organisms adapt to complex temporal environments that include daily, tidal, semi-lunar, lunar and seasonal cycles. However, our understanding of marine biological rhythms and their underlying molecular basis is mainly confined to a... more
Marine organisms adapt to complex temporal environments that include daily, tidal, semi-lunar, lunar and seasonal cycles. However, our understanding of marine biological rhythms and their underlying molecular basis is mainly confined to a few model organisms in rather simplistic laboratory settings. Here, we use new empirical data and recent examples of marine biorhythms to highlight how field ecologists and laboratory chronobiologists can complement each other's efforts. First, with continuous tracking of intertidal shorebirds in the field, we reveal individual differences in tidal and circadian foraging rhythms. Second, we demonstrate that shorebird species that spend 8–10 months in tidal environments rarely maintain such tidal or circadian rhythms during breeding, likely because of other, more pertinent, temporally structured, local ecological pressures such as predation or social environment. Finally, we use examples of initial findings from invertebrates (arthropods and pol...
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Recent findings suggest that relative investment of females and males into parental care depends on the population’s adult sex-ratio. For example, all else being equal, males should be the more caring sex if the sex ratio is male biased.... more
Recent findings suggest that relative investment of females and males into parental care depends on the population’s adult sex-ratio. For example, all else being equal, males should be the more caring sex if the sex ratio is male biased. Whether such outcomes are evolutionary fixed (i.e. related to the species’ typical sex-ratio) or whether they arise through flexible responses of individuals to the current population sex-ratio remains unclear. Nevertheless, a flexible response might be limited by evolutionary history when one sex loses the ability to care or when a single parent cannot successfully care. Here, we demonstrate that after the disappearance of one parent, individuals from 8 out of 15 biparentally incubating shorebird species were able to incubate uniparentally for 1-19 days (median = 3,N= 69). Such uniparental phases often resembled the incubation rhythm of species with obligatory uniparental incubation. Although it has been suggested that females of some shorebirds de...
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ABSTRACT