IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v21y2010i3p479-484.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the oxidative cost of begging: antioxidants enhance vocalizations in gull chicks

Author

Listed:
  • José C. Noguera
  • Judith Morales
  • Cristobal Pérez
  • Alberto Velando

Abstract

Offspring solicit food to their parents by begging displays, which are important in the parent--offspring communication. Most theoretical approximations on this behavior have centered on the view of begging as an honest signal of need or as a form of scramble competition for resources. In both signaling models, costly begging is necessary to stabilize the begging strategy at equilibrium. Nevertheless, evidence supporting begging as costly behavior remains scarce. We investigated whether oxidative stress may represent a general form of proximate cost of begging and also whether begging is related to offspring nutritional condition. To test this, we experimentally modified the chicks' nutritional condition and vitamin E availability and measured the effects on different begging components. The intensity of all begging components increased in chicks that were intake restricted, whereas vitamin E specifically enhance the total number of chatter calls given by chicks, mainly in those with a lower body size. Our results suggest that begging behavior is an antioxidant demanding activity and support the idea that oxidative stress may be a cost of begging. Our findings also suggest that begging behavior may be an honest signal of the nutritional and oxidative status of the chicks. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • José C. Noguera & Judith Morales & Cristobal Pérez & Alberto Velando, 2010. "On the oxidative cost of begging: antioxidants enhance vocalizations in gull chicks," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 21(3), pages 479-484.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:21:y:2010:i:3:p:479-484
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arq005
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Szabolcs Számadó & Dániel Czégel & István Zachar, 2019. "One problem, too many solutions: How costly is honest signalling of need?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, January.
    2. Lea Maronde & Heinz Richner, 2015. "Effects of increased begging and vitamin E supplements on oxidative stress and fledging probability," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(2), pages 465-471.
    3. Daniel Parejo-Pulido & Lorenzo Pérez-Rodríguez & Inmaculada Abril-Colón & Jaime Potti & Tomás Redondo, 2023. "Passive and active parental food allocation in a songbird," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 34(5), pages 729-740.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:21:y:2010:i:3:p:479-484. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.