Parental behaviour and family proximity as key to gosling survival in Greylag Geese (Anser anser)
Date
20/02/2019Author
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Abstract
Reproductive success in monogamous species is generally affected by both behavioural and hormonal fine-tuning between pair partners. Vigilance, defence and brooding of offspring are among the main parental investments, and often the sexes adopt different roles. In the present study, we investigate how sex differences in parental behaviour and family proximity in the socially monogamous Greylag Goose (Anser anser) affect gosling survival. During the reproductive season in spring 2013, we recorded the behaviour of 18 pairs with offspring and gosling survival in a semi-tame, long-term monitored, and individually marked flock of Greylag Geese in Grünau, Austria. We found that behavioural role differentiation between the parents varied with developmental phase, and thus with gosling age. Especially during the first 10 days after hatching, females were foraging more frequently than males, which were more vigilant and aggressive towards other flock members. Such differences between the sexes levelled out 20 to 30 days after hatching. In general, females stayed in closer proximity to their offspring than males. Gosling survival was high when the parents were relatively aggressive and emphasized vigilance rather than foraging behaviour. Hence, we show a direct link between pair partners’ quality of parental investment and gosling survival.
Citation
Szipl , G , Loth , A , Wascher , C A F , Hemetsberger , J , Kotrschal , K & Frigerio , D 2019 , ' Parental behaviour and family proximity as key to gosling survival in Greylag Geese ( Anser anser ) ' , Journal of Ornithology , vol. First Online . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-019-01638-x
Publication
Journal of Ornithology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2193-7192Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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