RUI: A Test of How the Timing of Nesting Influences the Genetic Identity of Nestlings in a Territorial Songbird

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Animal Behavior ProgramNon-technical AbstractTitle: RUI: A Test of How the Timing of Nesting Influences the Genetic Identity of Nestlings in a Territorial Songbird.PI: Johnson, L. ScottProposal #: 9904823Parental behavior in some bird species involves both male and females. Recent research has found that in some species, females may mate with males who are not their mates. Nests can therefore contain young that were not fathered by males tending the nest. Theoretically, males should act to minimize their chances of rearing another male's offspring. Dr. Scott Johnson asks if males can reduce their risk of rearing another male's offspring by nesting very early in the spring. Early nesting male territory holders should benefit from having relatively few neighbors that might sire the offspring of the territory holder's mate. In contrast, late-arriving males often find themselves surrounded by males whose mates are already incubating eggs, freeing these males to attempt to sire offspring of females paired with late-arriving males. A DNA based technique for determining the genetic identity of individuals will be used to conduct paternity analyses on broods of early and late-settling males in a Wyoming population of the House Wren, a small songbird, to test the prediction that early nesting males will be rearing more of their own offspring and fewer of their neighbors offspring.This study will provide new information on the strategies used by male birds to insure that they are rearing their own offspring and so is useful in advancing our ideas concerning the evolution of behavior. Moreover, it could be potentially important in explaining the advantage of early breeding in songbirds. Such an understanding could have relevance for songbird conservation. This one-year study will train one graduate student and three undergraduate students in research.