Showing papers by "Sophie Lumineau published in 2020"

The development of flight behaviours in birds

Abstract: Flight is a unique adaptation at the core of many behaviours in most bird species, whether it be foraging, migration or breeding Birds have developed a wide diversity of flight modes (eg flapping, gliding, soaring, hovering) which involves very specialized behaviours A key issue when studying flight behaviours is to understand how they develop through all the ontogenetic stages of birds, from the embryo to the flying adult This question typically involves classical debates on animal behaviour about the importance of maturation and experience Here, we review the literature available on the development of flight behaviours in birds First, we focus on the early period when young birds are not yet capable of flight We discuss examples and show how endogenous processes (eg wing flapping in the nest, flight development timing) and environmental factors (eg maternal stress, nutritional stress) can influence the development of flight behaviours Then, we review several examples showing the different processes involved in the development of flight in flight-capable juveniles (eg practice, trial and error learning, social learning) Despite the lack of experimental studies investigating this specific question at different developmental stages, we show that several patterns can be identified, and we anticipate that the development of new tracking techniques will allow us to study this question more thoroughly in more bird species

Maternal presence influences vocal development in the Japanese quail ( Coturnix c. japonica )

Abstract: Social influences on vocal development of young birds have been widely studied in oscine songbirds who learn to sing by vocal imitation of conspecifics, mainly male adults. In contrast, vocal development of non-vocal learners such as Galliformes is considered as being under strong genetic influence and independent of the social environment. In this study, we investigated the role of the mother on the vocal development of young Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica). We compared the vocal development of mothered and non-mothered chicks during the first 21 days of life. We analysed the structural changes of two vocalisations: a) the rally call, emitted during long-distance communication and in stressful situations, b) the contact call, emitted during short-distance communication when chicks are in visual and/or auditory contact with congeners. We showed that temporal and spectral structures of the two types of calls changed during development and differed between mothered and nonmothered chicks. These results demonstrate that maternal presence influences the vocal development of the young in the Japanese quail. Even if the adaptive value of such changes was not assessed, these results highlight that plasticity of vocalisations in species considered as non-vocal learners has been underestimated.