Biology subjects

Patricelli, G. L.

Publications and source records attributed to Patricelli, G. L..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

The effects of temperature on nestling growth in a songbird depend on developmental and social context

Climate change can adversely impact animals, especially those that cannot independently thermoregulate or avoid exposure. Cold, hot, and variable temperatures may impede nestling songbird growth due to increased thermoregulatory costs and reduced food delivery by parents. At a broad scale, temperature effects on nestling growth vary across climatic zones, but how temperature effects vary with early-life developmental constraints imposed by the timing of thermoregulatory development, competition with siblings, and the amount of parental care has received less attention. We investigated whether the effect of temperature on the mass of wild barn swallow (Hirundo rustica erythrogaster) nestlings (n = 113 nestlings, 31 nests) in Boulder County, CO depends on timing of exposure during development, relative size within the brood, or level of parental feeding. We found that the effect of minimum temperature differed in early and late development (before versus after putative development of thermoregulatory independence) and may be less pronounced for nestlings that received more parental feeding. We did not find evidence that the smallest nestling in the brood differs from other nestlings in vulnerability to temperature. These findings indicate the existence of fine-scale heterogeneity in which the effects of temperature on nestling development are sensitive to metabolic constraints and early-life social environment, providing key insight into the factors that may ameliorate or exacerbate climate impacts on individual birds.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Fighting isn't sexy in lekking Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)

In lekking systems, females can observe both male courtship displays and fights. It has been theorized that male-male agonism may function as a display, giving females more information about mate quality. However, males in many species, such as Greater Sage-grouse, often fight when females are absent, and can even attack during copulation attempts in seeming conflict with females choices. Traditional correlational approaches are inadequate to distinguish the underlying mechanisms of social interaction and can result in misleading associations between fighting and mating events. Using observations from a wild population, we posit a novel Relational Event Model that incorporates temporal dependencies of events among a network of individuals. We investigate how fighting among male sage-grouse predicts events such as future fights, copulation solicitations, and interrupted copulations. Our analysis reveals that fightings primary function is not to impress females. Indeed, males are less likely to start and more likely to leave fights with females present, plausibly to avoid entanglement in conflict that reduces availability to mate. Moreover, being drawn into these latter viscous cycles of combat and retribution constitutes a significant risk associated with initiating attacks on other males. However, fighting serves other roles, e.g., to deter copulation interruptions and rebuff competitors. Our findings suggest that social systems that regulate conflict and promote females choice based on display are likely fundamental to the stable evolution of leks.

animal behavior and cognition↗