| Literature DB >> 28515892 |
Tobias Roth1,2, Elias Bader3, Patrick Frara3, Lorenz Heer3, Heinz Flück3, Thomas Lüthi3, Barbara Schlup2,3, Thomas Schwaller3.
Abstract
Individual variation in postjuvenile molt in male Black Redstart is pronounced with about 90% of young males retaining female-like coloration (cairei plumage type) and about 10% acquiring adult male-like feathers (paradoxus plumage type). We examined whether autumn migration timing and body condition differed between individuals of the two plumage types. We used the data of 10,977 Black Redstarts captured during autumn at a ringing site in northern Switzerland where a protocol to record plumage types of captures has been applied since 1980. As cairei individuals cannot be distinguished from young females while sexing is comparatively easy for paradoxus individuals, the proportion of missing data on sex was likely to be higher for cairei individuals than for paradoxus individuals. We formally accounted for captures with unidentified sex using a Bayesian approach and conducted a simulation study to show that our approach was able to provide unbiased results even if the proportion of unsexed captures was high. Applying the method to the Black Redstart data, we found that the proportion of individuals with paradoxus plumage type increased from 7.6% in 1980 to 18.1% in 2013. Individuals with the paradoxus plumage type were on average 0.25 g heavier and had 0.62 mm longer third primaries than individuals with the cairei plumage type. However, we found no support for our expectation of later migration of paradoxus males compared to cairei individuals based on the assumption that paradoxus individuals should occupy autumn territories like adult males. Our results shed new light on the understudied timing of autumn migration in birds and are in line with available studies on Black Redstarts, suggesting a molt-constraint that allows only young males in good body condition to molt into adult-like plumages.Entities:
Keywords: delayed plumage maturation; missing data; molt‐constraint hypothesis; morphological monitoring
Year: 2017 PMID: 28515892 PMCID: PMC5433976 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2911
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Ecol Evol ISSN: 2045-7758 Impact factor: 2.912
Figure 1Differences in average day of capture between the age‐classes. Given are mean and 95% credible intervals of the posterior distribution. For young males, the average day of capture is given for individuals carrying the cairei plumage type (orange bar) and for individuals carrying the paradoxus plumage type (green bar). The sex and age of captures with missing data were estimated based on the described statistical model (Section 2)
Figure 2Differences in average length of third primary (left panel) and average body weight (right panel) among the age‐classes. Given are mean and 95% credible intervals of the posterior distribution. For young males, numbers are given for individuals carrying the cairei plumage type (orange bar) and individuals carrying the paradoxus plumage type (green bar). The sex and age of captures with missing data were estimated based on the described statistical model (Section 2)