Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Supplementary material for: Paternity moderates growth benefit to House Wren nestlings of having an asynchronously late-hatching nestmate

Katie LaBarbera*1,2, Emily R. A. Cramer3, Daniel Veronese1, and Irby J. Lovette1

1. Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program, Cornell Lab of Ornitholoy, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca NY 14850

2. Current address: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 3101 Valley Life Sciences Bldg, University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94720

3. Dept. of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Seeley G. Mudd Hall, Ithaca NY 14853

*Corresponding author; email: ; phone: (773)330-8474; fax: (510)643-8238

Male wing clip

METHODS

As part of a separate study, a subset of males had the tips of their primary feathers trimmed by approximately 2mm or 4mm. Fourteen of the males were recaptured during the nestling period (mean ± SD nestling age: 4 ± 1 d) and remeasured to test for an effect of the wing clip; we were unable to recapture the remaining two males. On average, males were recaptured 45 days (SD: 14.6 d, range: 25-76 d) after their first capture.

We used a GLM to test whether male mass at the second capture was affected by experimental treatment, while controlling for body mass at the first capture, and the date and time of the second capture. To maximize statistical power, we conducted this test on a larger sample of males, including 26 whose nests were not included in the nestling growth study. Type III ANOVA values were obtained using the package car (Fox and Weisberg 2011) in R v. 3.1.2

We reran models of nestling growth including paternal wing clip (big, small, or none) as a fixed effect to test for any effect of male wing clip on nestling growth.

RESULTS

Thirteen males receiving a big wing clip, 13 males receiving a little wing clip, and 12 males receiving no wing clip were caught twice and could be assessed for change in mass following the experimental treatment. Wing clipping did not significantly affect male mass at the second capture (χ22 = 2.3, P = 0.32, n = 38) while controlling for mass at the initial capture and date and time of the second capture. Paternal wing clip was not significant in either model of nestling growth, and the significance of other variables did not change when it was removed from the models.