Tag: Great Tit

Spring temperatures and laying dates of first eggs of three passerines in Croatia

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 34 abstract This study is based on the spring temperaturesand laying dates of first eggs of threepasserines (sedentary: Great Tit, Parus majorand Tree Sparrow, Passer montanus; migratory:Starling, Sturnus vulgaris). Laying datesof first eggs were used as estimates of timingof breeding. The term ‘laying date’ is definedas the date of […]

Diurnal mass gain strategies and perceived predation risk in the great tit Parus major

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 30 abstract Individual animals optimize their body mass to enhance fitness and mass is expected to be optimized over both short and long time-scales. On the short time-scale small birds increase mass as they build up energy reserves over each day to avoid starving at night. Theory predicts that […]

Paternal leakage of mitochondrial DNA in the great tit

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 25 abstract The animal mitochondrial DNA is normally inherited clonally from mother to all her offspring. Mitochondrial heteroplasmy, the occurrence of more than one mitochondrial haplotype within an individual can be generated by relatively common somatic mutations within an individual, by heteroplasmy of the oocytes or by paternal leakage […]

Manipulation of laying effort reveals habitat-specific variation in egg production constraints in Great Tits ( Parus major )

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 13 abstract It has been suggested that a bird’s clutch size is not limited by the amount of resources available at the time of laying but that differences in the availability of food for nestlings is the ultimate underlying factor determining spatio-temporal variations in clutch size. However, habitat-related variations […]

Inconsistent pattern of extra pair paternity in first and second broods of the Great T’it Parus major.

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 3 abstract In this study we compare extra-pair paternity rates in first and second broods of 25 individual breeding pairs of the Great Tit Parus major. 24% of the first broods contained at least one nestling due to copulations outside the pair bond in contrast to 60% for second […]

Sexual dimorphism in susceptibility to parasites and cell-mediated immunity in great tit nestlings

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 29 abstract Parasites can affect host fitness, provoke host responses, and thereby mediate host life history evolution. As life history strategies are often sex-specific, immunological or behavioural responses of the host aiming to reduce the impact of parasites may be sexually dimorphic, e.g. as a consequence of sex differences […]

The use of GIS in estimating spatial variation in habitat quality: a case study of lay-date in the Great Tit Parus major

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 32 abstract Finding the most biologically meaningful scale at which to describe environmental variation is a persistent problem in ecology. Most studies of forest passerines are conducted at the scale of the habitat or woodland and do not account for environmental variation between individual breeding sites. Here we employ […]

Effects of density beech crop and winter feeding on survival of juvenile Great Tits an analysis of Kluyver’s removal experiment.

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 14 abstract Density dependent processes and the availability of food may play an important role in the determination of population size. To investigate the relationship between density and local survival of juvenile Great Tits Parus m. major Kluyer removed first brood fledglings in two years. An analysis is presented […]