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Extra food provisioning does not affect behavioral lateralization in nestling lesser kestrels
Soravia, Camilla Bisazza, Angelo Cecere, Jacopo G. Rubolini, Diego
Soravia, Camilla
Bisazza, Angelo
Cecere, Jacopo G.
Rubolini, Diego
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2022-03-24
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Abstract
Costs and benefits of brain lateralization may depend on environmental conditions. Growing evidence indicates that the development of brain functional asymmetries is adaptively shaped by the environmental conditions experienced during early life. Food availability early in life could act as a proxy of the environmental conditions encountered during adulthood, but its potential modulatory effect on lateralization has received little attention. We increased food supply from egg laying to early nestling rearing in a wild population of lesser kestrels Falco naumanni, a sexually dimorphic raptor, and quantified the lateralization of preening behavior (head turning direction). As more lateralized individuals may perform better in highly competitive contexts, we expected that extra food provisioning, by reducing the level of intra-brood competition for food, would reduce the strength of lateralization. We found that extra food provisioning improved nestling growth, but it did not significantly affect the strength or direction of nestling lateralization. In addition, maternal body condition did not explain variation in nestling lateralization. Independently of extra food provisioning, the direction of lateralization differed between the sexes, with female nestlings turning more often toward their right. Our findings indicate that early food availability does not modulate behavioral lateralization in a motor task, suggesting limited phenotypic plasticity in this trait.
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Soravia, C., Bisazza, A., Cecere, J. G., & Rubolini, D. (2023). Extra food provisioning does not affect behavioral lateralization in nestling lesser kestrels. Current Zoology, 69(1), 66–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoac021
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Oxford University Press
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Current Zoology
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Article
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en
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© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Editorial Office, Current Zoology.
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1674-5507
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2396-9814
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The study was supported by institutional funding from the Università degli Studi di Milano (to D.R.), Università degli Studi di Padova (to C.S.), and the Istituto Nazionale per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale (ISPRA) (to J.G.C.). Nest-boxes were installed with support from the European Commission through the LIFE Project “Rapaci Lucani” (LIFE05NAT/IT/00009) and were designed by G. Ceccolini.