Caro S P, Lambrechts M M, Balthazart J, Perret P
Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, Research Group in Behavioural Neuroendocrinology, University of Liège, B-4000 Liège-1 (Sart Tilman), Belgium.
Behav Processes. 2007 May;75(1):1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2007.02.011. Epub 2007 Feb 13.
The seasonal development of life-history traits is influenced by many environmental factors. The impact of photoperiodic and non-photoperiodic factors on nest building and egg laying has been rarely investigated in non-domesticated avian species for which long term field data sets are available. Former investigations showed that blue tits originating from geographically close populations in the Mediterranean region do not respond in the same way to photoperiodic factors in semi-natural outdoor conditions. Here we show experimentally that nest building and onset of egg laying in captive blue tits is also proximately influenced by non-photoperiodic factors, including aspects related to aviary characteristics and social interactions between birds of the two sexes originating from different local Mediterranean study populations. In two successive experiments, we show that (1) increasing the volume of the aviary advanced the egg laying period of one specific population by almost 1 month, and (2) crossing pairs of birds from different origins strongly reduced the nest building and egg laying behaviours. These results indicate that obtaining biologically relevant breeding results in captivity with wild birds requires the control and experimental manipulation of a wide array of complex environmental cues.
生活史特征的季节性发展受多种环境因素影响。对于有长期野外数据集的非家养鸟类物种，光周期和非光周期因素对筑巢和产卵的影响鲜有研究。先前的研究表明，来自地中海地区地理上相近种群的蓝山雀，在半自然户外条件下对光周期因素的反应不尽相同。在此，我们通过实验表明，圈养蓝山雀的筑巢和产卵起始也受到非光周期因素的直接影响，这些因素包括与鸟舍特征以及来自地中海不同本地研究种群的两性鸟类之间的社会互动有关的方面。在两个连续的实验中，我们发现：（1）增大鸟舍体积使一个特定种群的产卵期提前了近1个月；（2）将不同来源的鸟配对会强烈减少筑巢和产卵行为。这些结果表明，要在圈养条件下让野生鸟类获得与生物学相关的繁殖结果，需要控制和实验性操纵一系列复杂的环境线索。
