Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wilcza 64, 00-679, Warsaw, Poland.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, OX10 8BB, UK.
Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 25;12(1):17845. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-21618-1.
Weather has a dominant impact on organisms, including their life histories and interspecific interactions. Yet, for nesting birds, and the arthropods inhabiting bird nests, the direct and cascading effects of weather are poorly known. We explored the influence of ambient temperatures and rainfall on the cohabitation of dome-shaped bird nests by Wood Warblers Phylloscopus sibilatrix, their blowfly Protocalliphora azurea ectoparasites, and predatory Myrmica and Lasius ants that may provide nest sanitation. We sampled blowflies and ants in 129 nests, and measured warbler nestlings during 2018-2020 in the primeval Białowieża Forest, eastern Poland. The probability of ectoparasites occurring in nests increased with increasing ambient temperatures and declining precipitation in the early nestling stage, when adult blowflies are ovipositing. Where present, the number of ectoparasites was greater if higher ambient temperatures had prevailed in the late nestling stage, but only when ants were absent from nests. However, the nestling growth was unrelated to ectoparasite abundance or ant presence within bird nests, although it was lower at high rainfall. The results suggest that weather can have conflicting impacts on interactions between nesting birds and nest-dwelling arthropods, but birds can mostly compensate for any related costs in old-growth forest, where food is generally abundant.
天气对生物有主导影响，包括它们的生活史和种间相互作用。然而，对于筑巢的鸟类和栖息在鸟巢中的节肢动物来说，天气的直接和级联效应知之甚少。我们探讨了环境温度和降雨量对柳莺（Phylloscopus sibilatrix）筑巢的 dome-shaped 鸟巢的同居、其寄生蝇（Protocalliphora azurea）外寄生虫和可能提供巢卫生的捕食性蚂蚁（Myrmica 和 Lasius）的影响。我们在 2018 年至 2020 年期间，在波兰东部原始比亚沃维耶扎森林中，对 129 个鸟巢中的寄生蝇和蚂蚁进行了采样，并测量了柳莺雏鸟的生长情况。当成年寄生蝇产卵时，鸟巢中出现外寄生虫的可能性随着环境温度的升高和降雨量的减少而增加。如果在雏鸟后期阶段环境温度较高，并且蚂蚁不在鸟巢中，则外寄生虫的数量会更多。然而，巢内寄生虫的丰度或蚂蚁的存在与雏鸟的生长无关，尽管在降雨量较高时，雏鸟的生长会降低。结果表明，天气可能对筑巢鸟类和栖息在鸟巢中的节肢动物之间的相互作用产生冲突影响，但鸟类在食物通常丰富的古老森林中，大多可以弥补相关的代价。
