Animal behavior

[Tero]

I have a couple of books on animal behavior. I was interesred in how behavior is inherited.

Came across this paper on birds of Europe, penduline tits (ha ha, very funny) who nest and mate with up to three mates.

The strange part is the nest abandonment. in a season a bird will renest with a new mate. Either males or females are left to incubate and raise the first nest. As single parent.
https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/a ... 2148-8-242

Since the nest leaving birds are likely to mate with other nest leavers, the outcome is not certain. So when the build a nest, lay eggs, they may abandon again. It may have to do with timing. If the birds sense that no more nesting is happening later, they may stick with the last nest. And they will have, then, two parents at that nest.

[JimC]

When I was in the Zoology Department, we often spoke of "Life History Strategies", of which an animal's behaviour at a particular time and place were only a part. They involved mating behaviour, of course, but also the number and size of eggs/offspring, the timing of reproduction, and the way that reproductive behaviour was conditional and could be changed to take advantage of circumstances.

Ultimately, the driving force behind the details of a life history strategy was optimising fitness in terms of healthy offspring produced over a lifetime. The variety of such strategies was a reflection of how they were affected and constrained by the ecological niche inhabited by the organism in question.

[Tero]

"...they were affected and constrained by the ecological niche inhabited by the organism in question."

Yeah, I always keep that in mind when reproducing, too.