Liu Jinmei, Ma Laikun, Jin Yameng, Zhang Fangfang, Li Xintong, Liang Wei
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology of Tropical Islands, Key Laboratory of Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology of Hainan Province, College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China.
School of Life Sciences, Hebei University, Baoding 071002, China.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Apr 13;13(8):1337. doi: 10.3390/ani13081337.
Snake sloughs in bird nests can reduce nest predation and serve as an anti-predator strategy. However, the anti-predator function of snake sloughs in nests has only been tested twice, and it is difficult to speculate around the origin of the differences, which may well include habitat, as predator species and predation risk vary in different habitat types. Habitat would be a good place to speculate as to how differences in habitats could explain differences in responses by nest predators. Thus, we selected three different habitats, namely, the Diaoluoshan National Nature Reserve in Hainan (DLS, tropical forest), the Hainan Normal University campus (HNU, urban area), and Qingchuifeng National Forest Park in Hebei (QCF, suburban area), to verify the anti-predator function of snake sloughs in bird nests. The experimental results showed that snake sloughs in the nests reduced the predation rate of the experimental nests in HNU, whereas no such effect occurred in DLS and QCF. This suggests that the anti-predatory function of snake sloughs may not be the same over some environmental gradients and could be dependent on the species of nest predators and food resources in the habitat, which does not apply to all types of habitats.
鸟巢中的蛇蜕能够降低鸟巢被捕食的概率，并作为一种反捕食策略。然而，鸟巢中蛇蜕的反捕食功能仅被测试过两次，而且很难推测其中差异的来源，这很可能包括栖息地，因为不同栖息地类型中的捕食者种类和捕食风险各不相同。栖息地将是一个很好的切入点，可以用来推测栖息地的差异如何解释鸟巢捕食者反应的差异。因此，我们选择了三种不同的栖息地，即海南的吊罗山国家级自然保护区（DLS，热带森林）、海南师范大学校园（HNU，市区）和河北的清西陵国家森林公园（QCF，郊区），以验证鸟巢中蛇蜕的反捕食功能。实验结果表明，鸟巢中的蛇蜕降低了HNU实验巢的被捕食率，而在DLS和QCF中未出现这种效果。这表明，蛇蜕的反捕食功能在某些环境梯度上可能并不相同，并且可能取决于栖息地中鸟巢捕食者的种类和食物资源，并非适用于所有类型的栖息地。
