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Nestling condition of a grassland bird is not associated with food availability in restored grasslands; [La condition de nidification d’un oiseau de prairie n’est pas associée à la disponibilité de la nourriture dans les prairies restaurées]
Kraus, Heather M. Houseman, Gregory R. Jameson, Mary Liz Reichenborn, Molly M. Boyle, W. Alice Jensen, William E.
Kraus, Heather M.
Houseman, Gregory R.
Jameson, Mary Liz
Reichenborn, Molly M.
Boyle, W. Alice
Jensen, William E.
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Issue Date
2025-05
Type
Article
Genre
Keywords
Body condition,CRP,Dickcissel,Food limitation,Grassland birds,Nestling condition,Sibling competition,Spiza americana
Subjects (LCSH)
Citation
Kraus, H. M., G. R. Houseman, M. L. Jameson, M. M. Reichenborn, W. A. Boyle, and W. E. Jensen. 2025. Nestling condition of a grassland bird is not associated with food availability in restored grasslands. Avian Conservation and Ecology 20(1):17. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-02829-200117
Abstract
Grassland bird populations have experienced steep declines in recent decades, necessitating better understanding of factors affecting their reproductive success. Grasslands are highly variable environments, and such variation affects the diversity and abundance of arthropods, which constitute the diet for most nestling grassland songbirds. Changes in arthropod abundance might affect parental food provisioning to nestlings and, consequently, nestling condition and survival. During the summers of 2017–2019, we examined the condition of Dickcissel (Spiza americana) nestlings from 288 nests in relation to biomass of arthropod prey across 36 restored grassland sites in Kansas that varied in vegetative management. Orthopteran (principal food for nestling Dickcissels) and total arthropod biomass were not related to cattle grazing or plant diversity in the initial seeding mix. Neither Dickcissel clutch size nor maximum brood size (including Brown-headed Cowbirds, Molothrus ater) were correlated with arthropod biomass measures in all years, which indicated that forage availability varied independently of clutch size. Neither age-corrected mass, mass/tarsus residuals, variation of tarsus length within broods, or plasma triglyceride concentration showed clear relationships with field-level variation in either arthropod biomass measure. This might be due to parental compensation for variable prey abundance. Brood size (including cowbirds) explained some variation in nestling condition with nestlings in larger broods generally exhibiting poorer condition (lower weight vs. structural size) than those in smaller broods. Thus, parents may be more limited in their capacity to feed all nestlings in large broods rather than limited by the availability of food within habitat patches. Consistent with previous hypotheses discounting food limitation to birds nesting in grasslands, our results suggest that Dickcissel nestling condition, known to affect post-fledging survival, might not be affected by spatial variation in food availability, at least in some years. © 2025 by the author(s).
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Description
This is an open access article under the CC BY license.
Publisher
Resilience Alliance
Journal
Avian Conservation and Ecology
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Archival Collection
PubMed ID
ISSN
17126568