Flight feather moult drives minimum daily heart rate in wild geese.

ABSTRACT: Waterfowl undergo an annual simultaneous flight-feather moult that renders them flightless for the duration of the regrowth of the flight feathers. In the wild, this period of flightlessness could restrict the capacity of moulting birds to forage and escape predation. Selection might therefore favour a short moult, but feather growth is constrained and presumably energetically demanding. We therefore tested the hypothesis that for birds that undergo a simultaneous flight-feather moult, this would be the period in the annual cycle with the highest minimum daily heart rates, reflecting these increased energetic demands. Implantable heart rate data loggers were used to record year-round heart rate in six wild barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis), a species that undergoes a simultaneous fl

SUBMITTER: Portugal SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6283923 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature