Familiarity breeds success: pairs that meet earlier experience increased breeding performance in a wild bird population.

ABSTRACT: In socially monogamous animals, including humans, pairs can meet and spend time together before they begin reproduction. However, the pre-breeding period has been challenging to study in natural populations, and thus remains largely unexplored. As such, our understanding of the benefits of mate familiarity is almost entirely limited to assessments of repeated breeding with a particular partner. Here, we used fine-scale tracking technology to gather 6 years of data on pre-breeding social associations of individually marked great tits in a wild population. We show that pairs which met earlier in the winter laid their eggs earlier in all years. Clutch size, number of hatched and fledged young, and hatching and fledging success were not influenced by parents' meeting time directly, but indirec

SUBMITTER: Culina A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7779496 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature