Figure 1 in Caro et al. (2025): "Experimental design. (A) On hatching day, nests were randomly assigned to be in a good environment (supplemented, green, Nest A), or a poor environment (unsupplemented, orange, Nest B). Supplemented nests received a daily mix of meal worms and wax worms (approximating 20% of the brood’s nutritional needs) for the week after hatching. Unsupplemented nests were visited daily to control for human disturbance. (B) After 1 week, we removed supplemented food and ranked chicks by size (weight) within natal nests. We created foster broods with chicks 1, 3, 5 and 7 from natal nest A, and chicks 2, 4, 6 from natal nest B. This accounted for potential differences in chick behavior based on their previous size rank; standardized size differences within broods; and standardized foster brood size to 7 or 6 chicks. We re-ranked chicks by size within foster nests (Nest C and Nest D). We handfed half of each foster brood to satiation in an alternating pattern by size rank; a mix of unsupplemented and supplemented chicks were fed in order to disentangle short-term and long-term need. This standardized brood-level begging intensity at the beginning of filming; ensured begging is variable enough across chicks to be a useable signal; and ensured begging intensity varied across size ranks. (C) We filmed adults feeding their fostered broods for 4.5 h, excluding first 0.5 h to ensure behavior had normalized (see Supplementary Movie 2 for an example). Fostered broods contained only unrelated chicks to ensure adult behavior was not influenced by familiarity to their own chicks. Photos by S. Caro."
New publication: Parental control: ecology drives #plasticity in parental response to #offspring signals, by @tjommem.bsky.social @keesvanoers.bsky.social and others. #feedingbehaviour #foodavailability
doi.org/10.1093/behe...
