I discovered 105 active nests, mainly while riding more sluggish along the land
Through the for every reproduction year i sought after nests intensively around the study website. We accompanied the brand new fate of each nest before eggs hatched or perhaps the colony failed. Nests had been decided to go to anywhere between 0900 and you will 1700 era and the check outs survived 200 m away from the nest, between 1000 and you may 1700 days. Amount of the latest focal observations ranged off 31 min to help you eight h, as well as the complete duration of observation is actually 29.5 h. Because the observations varied in total there was cases during the which the men was at the fresh new colony non-stop, so you can estimate the percentage of colony notice i pooled new focal findings from nests that have been at the same phase out-of incubation.
Just like the men will wilderness the new colony whenever interrupted within an initial phase of nesting https://kissbrides.com/blog/mail-order-brides-statistics/ duration ( Fernandez and Reboreda 2000), we monitored all the nests (nine of your own eleven times totaling 34 colony-days) throughout the middle- or late incubation
The thermistor of the temperature logger was introduced in a fresh natural orphan egg (unattended eggs laid far from active nests; Navarro et al. 1998) through a small hole in the equatorial plane and fixed to the eggshell with epoxy adhesive. The egg was attached to the center of the nest and the data logger was hidden under the nest. The data logger automatically recorded the temperature at 3.8 or 6 min intervals during four or six days, respectively. We monitored egg temperatures in those 11 nests totaling 40 nest-days. In the other two cases we started the monitoring of the nest three and five days after the laying of the first egg. None of the nests used for monitoring male activity was deserted. We used the decrease in egg temperature to determine when the male left the nest ( Hainsworth et al. 1998, Flint and Grand 1999). We previously estimated egg cooling-rate of Greater Rhea eggs by heating six fresh eggs up to 33°C and then placing them in an environment at a temperature of 25°C, similar to temperatures registered in our study area between 1100 and 1300 hours (the warmest time of the day). We estimated egg cooling-rate by dividing the initial difference in temperature between eggs and the environment by the time elapsed until eggs reached a thermal equilibrium with the environment. The estimated egg cooling-rate for a temperature gradient of 8°C was 0.063 ± 0.01°C min ?1 . We assumed that the male left the nest when the difference in egg temperature was |T(t) ? T(t?1)| > 1°C, where T(t) and T(t?1) are egg temperatures at a time interval of 15 min when data loggers were set at 3.8 min intervals or 18 min when they were set at 6 min intervals. We considered that the male was outside the nest since the time at which the difference between T(t) and T(t?1) was negative until the time it was positive (i.e. the male resumed incubation). Although the sun can heat eggs when the male is absent (particularly at midday), unattended eggs never reached temperatures >30°C (see below). Therefore, it was possible for us to discriminate between an increase in temperature produced by the Sun and one produced by males when they resume incubation.
We together with measured variation in eggs temperature inside around three fresh nests (nests in place of men attention). I used nests that were prior to now discontinued once the experimental nests. Into the each colony (clutch items regarding sixteen, 21, and 23 egg) we fixed one-egg having a thermistor inside, into the cardiovascular system of one’s nest similarly one we did into the active nests (come across more than).