Bird nest building : visions for the future
Abstract
Successful reproduction for most birds requires them to have built ‘good’ nests. The remarkable diversity of nests across approximately 10 000 species of living birds suggests that ‘good’ nest design depends critically on a species' microhabitat, life history and behaviour. Unravelling the key drivers of nest diversity remains a key research priority—bolstered by renewed appreciation for nest museum collections and increasing correlational field and experimental laboratory data. Phylogenetic analyses—coupled with powerful datasets of nest traits—are increasingly shedding light on the evolution of nest morphology and there are functional questions yet to be addressed. For birds, at least, developmental and mechanistic analyses of building (behaviour, hormones, neuroscience) itself, rather than measurements and analyses of nest morphology, are already becoming the next major challenge. We are moving towards a holistic picture in which Tinbergen's four levels of explanation: evolution, function, development, and mechanism, are being used to explain variation and convergence in nest design—and, in turn, could shed light on the question of how birds know how to build ‘good’ nests.
Citation
Healy , S D , Tello Ramos , M C & Hebert , M 2023 , ' Bird nest building : visions for the future ' , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , vol. 378 , no. 1884 , 20220157 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0157
Publication
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0962-8436Type
Journal item
Description
Funding: Templeton World Charity Foundation and National Geographic Society (M.C.T.-R.: TWCF 0210, EC-58859R-19) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (M.H.).Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.