Parental benefits and offspring costs reflect parent-offspring conflict over the age of fledging among songbirds.

ABSTRACT: Parent-offspring conflict has explained a variety of ecological phenomena across animal taxa, but its role in mediating when songbirds fledge remains controversial. Specifically, ecologists have long debated the influence of songbird parents on the age of fledging: Do parents manipulate offspring into fledging to optimize their own fitness or do offspring choose when to leave? To provide greater insight into parent-offspring conflict over fledging age in songbirds, we compared nesting and postfledging survival rates across 18 species from eight studies in the continental United States. For 12 species (67%), we found that fledging transitions offspring from comparatively safe nesting environments to more dangerous postfledging ones, resulting in a postfledging bottleneck. This raises an imp

SUBMITTER: Jones TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7720218 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature