Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on June 29, 2005
Behavioral Ecology 2005 16(5):906-913; doi:10.1093/beheco/ari069
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Exploring individual quality: basal metabolic rate and reproductive performance in storm-petrels
a Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA, b Biology Department, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH 43022, USA, c Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA, d Department of Biology, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME 04011, USA, and e Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Address correspondence to A.L. Blackmer, who is now at the Department of Biology, Sacramento City College, 3835 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95822, USA. E-mail: blackma{at}scc.losrios.edu.
Despite evidence that some individuals achieve both superior reproductive performance and high survivorship, the factors underlying variation in individual quality are not well understood. The compensation and increased-intake hypotheses predict that basal metabolic rate (BMR) influences reproductive performance; if so, variation in BMR may be related to differences in individual quality. We evaluated whether BMR measured during the incubation period provides a proximate explanation for variation in individual quality by measuring the BMRs and reproductive performance of Leach's storm-petrels (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) breeding on Kent Island, New Brunswick, Canada, during 2000 and 2001. We statistically controlled for internal (body mass, breeding age, sex) and external (year, date, time of day) effects on BMR. We found that males with relatively low BMRs hatched their eggs earlier in the season and that their chicks' wing growth rates were faster compared to males with relatively high BMRs. Conversely, BMR was not related to egg volume, hatching date, or chick growth rate for females or to lifetime (
23 years) hatching success for either sex. Thus, for males but not for females, our results support the compensation hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that animals with low BMRs will achieve better reproductive performance than animals with high BMRs because they have lower self-maintenance costs and therefore can apportion more energy to reproduction. These results provide evidence that intraspecific variation in reproductive performance is related to BMR and suggest that BMR may influence individual quality in males.
Key words: basal metabolic rate, compensation hypothesis, individual quality, Leach's storm-petrel, Oceanodroma leucorhoa, reproductive performance.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  B. Moe, F. Angelier, C. Bech, and O. Chastel Is basal metabolic rate influenced by age in a long-lived seabird, the snow petrel? J. Exp. Biol., October 1, 2007; 210(19): 3407 - 3414. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|