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Dominance in feeding territories relates to foraging success and offspring growth in brown skuas Catharacta antarctica lonnbergi

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Abstract

Territoriality should lead to strict dominance, as territory holders typically control access to resources and exclude others from their use. In feeding territories, dominance should be reflected in foraging success and ultimately in reproduction differences; however, these successive links have rarely been made explicit. Therefore, we investigated a population of brown skuas Catharacta antarctica lonnbergi, in which only part of the breeding population occupied feeding territories within penguin colonies. We identified the dominance hierarchy and determined the foraging success of the participants in fights for access to penguin carcasses within the territories. Furthermore, we monitored offspring growth from parents with and without feeding territories. Our results indicated a clear dominance hierarchy with territorial birds in their own territory dominating over territorial breeders from other territories, non-territorial breeders and non-breeding birds. However, territory owners could not completely exclude others from access to food. Foraging success was positively related to dominance scores: The dominant territory owners received 63% of a carcass, whereas non-territorial pairs could get less than 10%. The link between foraging success and offspring development was less clear: Although male chicks of non-territorial parents suffered from lower growth rates and, thus, delayed fledging, there were no such differences in female chicks. Territoriality in skuas did not imply a complete occupation of food, but guaranteed optimal growth conditions for offspring. Non-territorial individuals were forced to search for alternative resources, and the restricted access to the preferred food resulted in inferior conditions for offspring development, making this foraging strategy less rewarding.

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Acknowledgments

We are very thankful to K. Reinhardt, B. A. Nolet, M. Klaassen, B. Hoye and an anonymous referee for stimulating comments on the manuscript and H.-U. Peter for invaluable support during all Antarctic field campaigns. The project was partly financed by the German Research Council (DFG, Pe 454/9-1) and by the State Thuringia (Landesgraduiertenstipendium). This is publication 4223 of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology.

All fieldwork was carried out under permission of the German Federal Office of Environment (Umweltbundesamt) No. 13.4-94003-1/5-7.

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Author notes

  1. Steffen Hahn

    Present address: Swiss Ornithological Institute, 6204, Sempach, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ecology, Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Dornburger Strasse 159, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Steffen Hahn

  2. Centre for Limnology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), P.O. Box 1299, 3600 BG, Maarssen, The Netherlands

    Steffen Hahn & Silke Bauer

Authors
  1. Steffen Hahn
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  2. Silke Bauer
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Correspondence to Steffen Hahn.

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Communicated by I. Hartley

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Foraging success (FS) of individuals and pairs of brown skuas of different status foraging on penguin carcass inside a feeding territory
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Hahn, S., Bauer, S. Dominance in feeding territories relates to foraging success and offspring growth in brown skuas Catharacta antarctica lonnbergi . Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62, 1149–1157 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-007-0543-7

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