Planet of Birds

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 13 abstract It has been suggested that a bird’s clutch size is not limited by the amount of resources available at the time of laying but that differences in the availability of food for nestlings is the ultimate underlying factor determining spatio-temporal variations in clutch size. However, habitat-related variations […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 1 abstract We studied patterns of breeding dispersal of adult Great Tits Parus major in a homogeneous habitat (extensive orange plantations) in eastern Spain. Data included 482 movements of known individuals gathered during 11 years. Most birds (67%) did not change territory between seasons. Dispersal propensity was independent of […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 24 abstract Great Tits Parus major and other small birds at temperate latitudes insure against overnight starvation in winter by building up a fat reserve each day, which is then depleted over night. Because this may increase their risk of predation, the levels of fat reserves carried appear to […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 5 abstract We studied whether pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) and great tit (Parus major) females differed in quality between polluted and unpolluted habitats. Comparing female condition between incubation and nestling periods, we aimed at testing whether biometric differences in F. hypoleuca females were caused by assortative settlement (i.e. intraspecific […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 15 abstract Daily weight increments of nestling Great Tits are expressed as ratios of observed increment divided by the increment expected under favourable conditions. We used this ratio to examine the effects of local environmental conditions on nestling growth. We demonstrate a positive relationship between nestling growth and food […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 29 abstract Parasites can affect host fitness, provoke host responses, and thereby mediate host life history evolution. As life history strategies are often sex-specific, immunological or behavioural responses of the host aiming to reduce the impact of parasites may be sexually dimorphic, e.g. as a consequence of sex differences […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 32 abstract Finding the most biologically meaningful scale at which to describe environmental variation is a persistent problem in ecology. Most studies of forest passerines are conducted at the scale of the habitat or woodland and do not account for environmental variation between individual breeding sites. Here we employ […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 14 abstract Density dependent processes and the availability of food may play an important role in the determination of population size. To investigate the relationship between density and local survival of juvenile Great Tits Parus m. major Kluyer removed first brood fledglings in two years. An analysis is presented […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 6 abstract The ornithological journals tend to publish the first observation of a fact or behaviour (e.g. Rolando & Zunino, 1992; Putnam, 1996; Dijkstra et al., 1997; Lozano & Lemon, 1998), but later observations of the same topic are usually not published, or they are published in very local […]

Great Tit (Parus major) Science Article 33 abstract Data from 939 nests of the Blue Tit Parus caeruleus and 1008 nests of the Great Tit P. major from nestboxes provided in superabundance in mixed forest study sites between 1976 and 2001 were analysed to examine the effects of mate retention on breeding success and the […]