Search results for "Incubation bouts"

Deconstructing incubation behaviour in response to ambient temperature over different timescales

2021

Avian embryos need a stable thermal environment to develop optimally, while incubat-ing females need to allocate time to self-maintenance off the nest. In species with female-only incubation, eggs are exposed to ambient temperatures that usually cool them down during female absences. The lower the ambient temperature the sooner females should return to re-warm the eggs. When incubation constraints ease at increasing ambient temperatures, females respond by increasing either incubation effort or self-maintenance time. These responses are population-dependent even within the same species; but it is uncertain whether they are caused by local environmental conditions or they are an artefact fro…