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

小行星9310711 大卫先生哈斯克尔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）乞讨叫声的演变。 这些不同的新大陆热带移民在各种各样的地点筑巢，哈斯克尔先生最近的实验表明，从地面巢穴乞讨的雏鸟比从树上乞讨的雏鸟遭受捕食的风险更大。 哈斯克尔先生现在将测试一个假设，即地面筑巢物种的乞讨叫声比树上筑巢物种的乞讨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是感兴趣的生物学家感兴趣的鸟类种群的生产力和行为，已经演变到减轻雏鸟死亡率。 乞讨的进化也是相当多的理论研究的主题，这项研究也应该对研究亲子互动进化的生物学家感兴趣。

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.