Development of behaviour in a unique system
Most birds receive parental care and have the opportunity to learn essential behaviour, such as how to feed, avoid predators, and recognise potential mates. It is thus generally assumed that learning is an important part of avian development. The potential bias of this generalisation does not become obvious until we consider systems in which conditions do not favour the occurrence of learning, such as interspecific brood parasites. We are exploring the role of learning in the behavioural development of megapodes (family megapodiidae), a group of birds found in the Australo-Pacific region which have a unique reproductive strategy: they leave the incubation of their eggs to external heat sources, such as geothermal heat in burrows or the heat produced by microbial decomposition in mounds of organic material. Their chicks dig themselves out of the soil and live completely independently. They do not cohabit with adults and, because of their solitary lifestyle in dense vegetation, they meet other chicks at an unpredictable time of life. Our experiments are based upon the earlier finding that chicks of the Australian Brush-turkey Alectura lathami posses functional antipredator and social behaviour right from hatching. In this new study, we are following the behavioural development of two Australian megapode species, the Brush-turkey and Orange-footed Megapode, Megapodius reinwardt, to explore how much this pre-existing behaviour changes with age and thus how important learning is in the development of these 'unparented' birds. A complementary project is concerned with the stimuli evoking species-specific behaviour in megapode hatchlings. By manipulating the plumage patterns, movements and calls of a conspecific, we hope to ascertain which mechanisms underlie species recognition.
Participants: Ann Göth & Chris Evans
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