Nesting biology of the Spotted Nightingale-Thrush (Catharus dryas) and comparison of life histories in the genus Catharus

ABSTRACT

Elucidating new reproductive traits and evaluating how they vary within and among species in a geographic context, is relevant to understanding the evolutionary processes underlying diversity in life-history strategies. In this study we describe the breeding biology of Catharus dryas in a Peruvian population, and compare life history traits with a subtropical population and other temperate Catharus thrushes to better understand intra and interspecific variations in nesting traits. We monitored 35 nests of C. dryas between 2008 and 2013 in an Andean cloud forest of the Manu National Park in Peru and conducted a literature review of the nesting biology of Catharus species. We provide new information on nest architecture, nestling growth rate, incubation behaviour, reproductive phenology and egg temperature. The intraspecific comparison with an Argentinian population showed that despite the 13° latitudinal differences, nesting characters were highly conserved. These include a clutch size of two eggs, and an incubation and nestling period of 14 days. Nest attendance differed slightly (60 and 67% in Peru and Argentina, respectively). The interspecific comparisons showed that tropical and temperate species followed respectively slow and fast reproductive strategies in most of the traits according to the life-history theory, but other such as average incubation time, nestling feeding rate, and some dimensions in the nest architecture were similar between C. dryas and the temperate species. Although detailed descriptions are needed for Catharus species, especially tropical species to conduct more robust comparisons, our results exemplify how intra and interspecific comparison based on natural history data can help to understand life-history evolution in a biogeographic context.

KEYWORDS:

• Breeding biology
• Manu National Park
• natural history
• Neotropic
• reproduction
• Turdidae

Acknowledgements

We thank D. Ocampo, M. Sanchéz, J. Bermudez, R. Hanauer, M. Kelly, R. Aracil, C. Flórez, D. Rincón, A. Carter, and L. Silver for the great help in field and data collection. Our study was possible thanks to the logistical support of the NGO Peru Verde that allowed use of the Cock of the Rock Reserve. Also, we are grateful to C. Gómez, O. Laverde, D. Fordham, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript, and P. Montoya for helping with the analysis. The University of Florida IACUC approved our animal use [Protocol # 201106068]. Finally, we thank SERNAP for allowing us to work in Manu National Park [0239-2013 MINAGRI-DGFFS/DGEFFS 2013].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by a National Science Foundation Grant DEB-1120682, the Wilson Ornithological Society Louis Agassiz Fuertes Award, Journal of Field Ornithology, Pamela and Alexander F. Skutch Research Award, the Dexter Fellowships in Tropical Conservation, and the AOU Alexander Wetmore Memorial Research Award.