Date of Award

5-3-2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Biology, MS

First Advisor

Thomas Risch

Committee Members

Cheryl Dykstra; Richard Grippo; Virginie Rolland

Abstract

I used video monitoring to quantify egg-laying intervals, partial incubation, hatching asynchrony, feeding rates, sibling aggression, and causes of mortality or nest failure in a suburban population of Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus). The egg-laying interval and parents' partial incubation behavior during egg-laying resulted in a significant correlation between the sum of incubation time during egg-laying and the hatching span (r2 = 0.83, p <0.0001). Hatch rank was the most significant predictor for both the amount of food consumed and the number of aggressive acts displayed by a nestling. First-hatched senior nestlings received significantly more food and were significantly more aggressive than junior nestlings. Broods of three displayed significantly more aggression than broods of two, and aggression decreased significantly from week two to three. There was no significant relationship between the total amount of food consumed and the total amount of aggression in each nest, which rejects the food amount hypothesis.

Rights Management

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Included in

Biology Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.