Dissertation Research: A Comparative Study of Nestling Begging Behavior in Neotropical Migrant Birds

David G. Haskell先生的博士论文研究将调查捕食风险的变化如何影响雏鸟林莺（Parulidae）乞求叫声的演变。这些来自新大陆的热带候鸟在各种各样的地方筑巢，哈斯克尔先生最近的实验表明，从地面筑巢乞讨的雏鸟被捕食的风险比从树上乞讨的雏鸟要大得多。哈斯克尔先生现在将验证一个假设，即在地面筑巢的物种的乞求叫声比在树上筑巢的物种的乞求叫声更难听到和定位。这将是第一次使用标准化记录协议对雏鸟叫声进行比较研究，并考虑到被比较物种的系统发育关系。捕食是大多数雏鸟死亡的主要原因，这项研究的结果应该引起对鸟类种群生产力和鸟类行为进化以降低雏鸟死亡率感兴趣的生物学家的兴趣。乞讨的进化也是相当多的理论工作的主题，这项研究应该对研究亲子互动进化的生物学家也感兴趣。

9310711 Winkler Mr. David G. Haskell's doctoral-dissertation research will investigate how variations in predation risk have affected the evolution of begging calls of nestling wood warblers (Parulidae). These diverse New World tropical migrants nest in a wide variety of sites, and Mr. Haskell's recent experiments show that nestlings begging from ground nests incur greater increases in the risk of predation than do nestlings begging from trees. Mr. Haskell will now test the hypothesis that ground-nesting species have begging calls that are harder to hear and to locate than the begging calls of tree-nesting species. This will be the first comparative study of nestling calls to use standardized recording protocols and to take into account the phylogenetic relationships of the species being compared. Predation is the major source of mortality for most nestling birds, an the results of this study should be of interest to biologists interested in the productivity of bird populations and the behaviors that have evolved to mitigate nestling mortality. The evolution of begging has also been the subject of considerable theoretical work, and this study should be of interest to biologists studying the evolution of parent-offspring interactions as well.