Untangling courtship

June 25, 2012

Shortly after sunrise near Pipeline Road in Panama’s Soberania National Park, Ioana Chiver plants two poles in the ground and pulls bunches of netting out of a canvas bag

Shortly after sunrise near Pipeline Road in Panama’s Soberania National Park, Ioana Chiver plants two poles in the ground and pulls bunches of netting out of a canvas bag.

When it is first strung between poles, the mist net looks like a Halloween witch’s wig. Ioana works her own magic, as mosquitoes whine in harmony around her head, to untangle it and make it disappear against a background of green-fruited Psychotria shrubs and swirly stems of orange-flowered Renealmia.

Ioana’s been migrating between York University in Canada and Panama since 2006, watching and recording the calls of birds that live here year-round. Unlike Canada’s mostly insectivorous birds, her Red-throated Anttanagers eat and feed their young a mixed diet of insects and fruit. How does a bird’s diet affect timing of reproduction and mate choice?

Now in that purgatory of revising papers after a successful PhD defence, Ioana is wondering how often fruit eating is associated with increased courtship behaviour and multiple mating.


A bird in the hand is hard won but yields much information: size, weight, overall health and a blood sample, which lets Ioana know if it is related to both members of a nest pair or only its mother.

Back

Print article   More articles   Comments