Journal
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
Volume 21, Issue 2, Pages 233-241Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arp177
Keywords
carrion crow; cooperative breeding; cost of reproduction; false feeding; helpers at the nest; provisioning adjustment
Categories
Funding
- Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [CGL2005-02083/BOS, CGL2008-01829BOS]
- Juan de la Cierva'' program-FSE
- COCOR 'Cooperation in Corvids'
- TECT 'The Evolution of Cooperation and Trading' [SEJ2007-29836-E]
- FEDER Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional''
- FSE Fondo Social Europeo''
- Gates Cambridge Trust scholarship
- Emmanuel College
- Xunta de Galicia
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False feeding, where individuals refrain from delivering a food item to a begging dependent young, has been described in several cooperative bird and mammal species, but its function is still unclear. False feeding has been suggested to represent either a deceptive tactic of helpers aimed at showing off provisioning behavior to the rest of the group without paying the costs or a normal provisioning behavior of caregivers mediated by the trade-off between the hunger of the young and caregivers' own conditions. Here, we employed an experimental approach to test whether false feeding in cooperatively breeding carrion crows responds plastically to variations of chicks' and caregivers' needs. In 4 different treatments, we manipulated the hunger of the brood and the conditions of group members by 1) experimentally feeding the chicks, 2) food-supplementing group members during the breeding season or 3) throughout the whole year, and 4) clipping 2 primary feathers from each wing of some individuals to increase the costs of flight. Breeders increased false feeding when the brood was food supplemented (treatment 1) and after their wings were clipped (treatment 4), whereas helpers did not change their false-feeding behavior in response to these treatments. Conversely, helpers decreased false feeding when food was supplemented year-round (treatment 3), whereas fed breeders did not show any significant difference compared with controls. These results indicate that a trade-off between chicks' needs (current reproduction) and caregivers' conditions (future reproduction) modulates the occurrence of false feeding, determining different responses in different group members.
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