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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on March 8, 2007
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arm006
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Mouth coloration of nestlings covaries with offspring quality and influences parental feeding behavior

Rosa Mary de Ayalaa, Nicola Sainob, Anders Pape Møllerc and Cecilia Anselmid

a Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Calle General Segura 1, 04001 Almería, Spain b Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Milano, via Celoria 26, I-20133 Milano, Italy c Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, CNRS UMR 7103, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bât. A, 7ème étage, 7 quai St Bernard, Case 237, F-75252 Paris Cedex 05, France d Dipartimento Farmaco Chimico Tecnologico, Centro Interdipartimentale di Scienza e Tecnologia Cosmetiche, Università di Siena, via della Diana 2, I- 53100 Siena, Italy

Address correspondence to R.M. de Ayala. E-mail: deayala{at}eeza.csic.es.


  Abstract

Altricial nestlings compete with their nest mates for resources delivered by parents. Parents may allocate food to nestlings based on reproductive value of offspring. To test the hypothesis that mouth coloration acts as a signal of nestling condition in the barn swallow Hirundo rustica, we investigated whether gape coloration is correlated with offspring quality and age. We also examined the role of ultraviolet (UV) flange coloration in parental allocation in a manipulative experiment. Mouth coloration changed with age, probably due to accumulation of dietary carotenoids in the tissue and an increase in the number of collagen layers. Highly UV and redder palates and brighter flanges were associated with longer tarsi and greater body mass at day 6 and with feather growth at day 12 posthatching. Although we did not find evidence that UV coloration of flanges is associated with nestling quality, parents preferentially fed young whose flanges reflected higher UV light, compared with experimentally UV-filtered nestlings. These results support the hypothesis that mouth coloration is a reliable signal of nestling condition. In addition, they show that UV flange coloration influences parental decisions regarding food allocation.

Key words: food allocation, honest signaling, nestling mouth coloration, parent–offspring communication, parental care, UV coloration.

Received 17 March 2006; revised 25 December 2006; accepted 21 January 2007.


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