Dunnock Behaviour and Social Evolution

ISBN-13: 9780198546757 / Angielski / Miękka / 1992 / 288 str.

N. B. Davies

Opis

At first sight just a small brown bird, the dunnock's unobtrusive appearance belies its extraordinary behavior and mating patterns. This book gives a full account of the mating systems of the dunnock or hedge sparrow, Prunella modularis, which include pairs, a male with two females, two males with one female, and several males with several females. Detailed observations, elegant field experiments, and DNA fingerprinting are combined to show how this variable social organization arises from selfish individuals competing to maximize their own reproductive success. Further experiments reveal how the cuckoo may thwart the dunnock's parental efforts. David Quinn's exquisite drawings provide a visual summary of the bird's behavior. All students of ecology, evolution, and animal behavior will want to be familiar with this work, which addresses the wider issues of the influence of ecology on mating systems and the evolutionary significance of conflict within and between species. This is the third volume in the Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution, and the first in this series to address behavioral ecology.

Recenzje

'In this well-written monograph, Davies brings together information from a variety of papers written in the past decade ... Davies book is almost perfect as a focus of, say, graduate seminars in behavioral ecology ... One of the strengths of this monograph is that it shows just what can be accomplished in behavioral ecology working with a population of wild, banded birds. For this reason alone, Davies' book should be exceedingly useful for students planning research projects. I highly recommend Nick Davies' book for all students of bird behavior. Certainly, every university library should have this title in their collection, and behavioral ecologists will want their own copoies.' Randall Breitwisch, University of Dayton, The Auk 111(1) 1994

Spis treści

Why Dunnocks?; Study species and study area; Population structure and the variable mating system; Territorial behaviour: competition for habitat and mates; Factors influencing an individual's competitive success; Mate guarding and mating: sexual conflict; Relating behaviour to maternity and paternity; Reproductive output from the different mating systems; Individual reproductive success in the various mating systems; Parental effort by males and females in pairs and trios; How males allocate effort between broods in polygyny and polygynandry; Paternity and parental effort; Parasitism by Cuckoos; Sexual conflict, parental care, and mating systems; References; Author and subject index.