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Research | Open Access

The allocation between egg size and clutch size depends on local nest survival rate in a mean of bet-hedging in a shorebird

Zitan Song1, Xin Lin1, Pinjia Que2, Naerhulan Halimubieke3, Qin Huang1, Zhengwang Zhang2, Tamás Székely1,2,3,4, Yang Liu1 ( )
State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, College of Ecology/School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, Guangdong, China
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
Milner Centre for Evolution, Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath, BA1 7AY, UK
Department of Evolutionary Zoology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary
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Abstract

Background

The allocation of resources between offspring size and number is a central question of life-history theory. Although several studies have tested the existence of this trade-off, few studies have investigated how environmental variation influences the allocation of resources to offspring size and offspring number. Additionally, the relationship between population dynamics and the offspring size and number allocation is far less understood.

Methods

We investigate whether resource allocation between egg size and clutch size is influenced by the ambient temperature and whether it may be related to apparent nest survival rate. We measured 1548 eggs from 541 nests of two closely related shorebird species, the Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) and the White-faced Plover (C. dealbatus) in China, in four populations that exhibit contrasting ambient environments. We weighed females, monitored nest survival, and calculated the variance of ambient temperature.

Results

Although we found that egg size and clutch size were all different between the four breeding populations, the reproductive investment (i.e. total clutch volume) was similar between populations. We also found that populations with a high survival rate had relatively larger eggs and a smaller clutch than populations with a low nest survival rate. The latter result is in line with a conservative/diversified bet-hedging strategy.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that plovers may increasing fitness by investing fewer, larger or many, small according local nest survival rate to make a similar investment in reproduction, and thereby may have an impact on population demography.

Keywords

Resource allocationAmbient temperatureBet-hedging strategyNest survival rateShorebirds

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Avian Research
Volume 11 Issue 1,
January 2020
Article number: 40
DOI: 10.1186/s40657-020-00225-6
Cite this article:
Song Z, Lin X, Que P, et al. The allocation between egg size and clutch size depends on local nest survival rate in a mean of bet-hedging in a shorebird. Avian Research, 2020, 11(1): 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40657-020-00225-6

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Received: 13 August 2020
Accepted: 28 September 2020
Published: 23 October 2020
© The Author(s) 2020.

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