The Influence of Sounds on Conspecific Habitat Selection and Egg-Laying Behaviour in Japanese Tits
[Objectives]Sound is one of the most important forms of communication for birds,serving as means of courtship,domain defense and threat information transmission,and so on.However,there are few reports on whether sounds could affect the reproductive decisions of birds as social information.[Methods]In this study,we chose Japanese Tits Parus minor in the Zuojia Nature Reserve of Jilin Province as the research object,using playback experiments with males'courtship song and the conspecific alarm calls,we explored whether habitat selection and egg-laying behaviors of Japanese Tits breeders were affected by sound-based social information.The numbers of nests in the males'courtship song playback plots,the conspecific alarm calls playback plots,and control plots were compared using the Chi-square test.Generalized linear mix model(GLMMs)was used to analyze the effects of playback of males'courtship song and alarm calls on the egg-laying date and clutch size of Japanese Tits.[Results]The results showed that there was a significant increase in the number of breeding nests in the plots with playback of male's courtship songs,while there was no difference between the numbers of nests in plots with alarm calls and control plots.But the sounds had no significant effect on the first egg laying date and the clutch size of the Japanese Tits(Fig.1).[Conclusion]This study suggests that the conspecific songs can serve as social information for bird habitat selection,but their reproductive fitness may be influenced by other factors.
Sound playbackHabitat selectionFirst egg laying dateClutch sizeJapanese Tit,Parus minor
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