Search results for "zebra finches"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Can video playback provide social information for foraging blue tits?
2017
Video playback is becoming a common method for manipulating social stimuli in experiments. Parid tits are one of the most commonly studied groups of wild birds. However, it is not yet clear if tits respond to video playback or how their behavioural responses should be measured. Behaviours may also differ depending on what they observe demonstrators encountering. Here we present blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) videos of demonstrators discovering palatable or aversive prey (injected with bittertasting Bitrex) from coloured feeding cups. First we quantify variation in demonstrators’ responses to the prey items: aversive prey provoked high rates of beak wiping and head shaking. We then show tha…
The effect of social information from live demonstrators compared to video playback on blue tit foraging decisions.
2019
Video playback provides a promising method to study social interactions, and the number of video playback experiments has been growing in recent years. Using videos has advantages over live individuals as it increases the repeatability of demonstrations, and enables researchers to manipulate the features of the presented stimulus. How observers respond to video playback might, however, differ among species, and the efficacy of video playback should be validated by investigating if individuals’ responses to videos are comparable to their responses to live demonstrators. Here, we use a novel foraging task to compare blue tits’ (Cyanistes caeruleus) responses to social information from a live …
Age-dependent allocation of carotenoids to coloration versus antioxidant defences.
2009
SUMMARYAging is commonly attributed to age-related changes in oxidative damage due to an increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and a weakened efficacy of enzymatic antioxidants. These age-related changes might therefore modify the use of dietary antioxidants, including carotenoids. As carotenoids are closely associated with the expression of secondary sexual signals, the allocation of carotenoids to sexual signal versus antioxidant defences may vary with age. In this study, we explored how carotenoid-based ornament and antioxidant activity varied with age and how an inflammatory-induced oxidative burst affected ornament and antioxidant activity across a range of ages. Using …