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Public information revealed by pellets in nest sites is more important than ecto-parasite avoidance in the settlement decisions of Eurasian kestrels

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Abstract

Animals constantly need to acquire information about the environment for settlement decisions, either by using a trial-and-error strategy or by using public information by monitoring conspecifics. We studied a nest box population of Eurasian kestrels Falco tinnunculus in western Finland to test if pellets and other prey remains accumulated on the bottom of nest boxes are used as public information during settlement. During 2002–2013, nest boxes were randomly cleaned (treatment) or left un-cleaned (control) in each season. It is possible that kestrels reuse nest boxes which include information of successful nesting (i.e. have not been cleaned) because they indicate previous breeding attempt at the site. At the same time, this decision may entail costs because of blood-sucking ecto-parasites like Carnus hemapterus overwintering in the layer of pellets. First, we found that egg-laying date was significantly earlier in un-cleaned control boxes than in cleaned treatment boxes, indicating the use of public information revealed by pellets in the settlement decision. Second, the ecto-parasite burden of young nestlings (age 6–15 days) was significantly higher in un-cleaned control nest boxes. We found higher ecto-parasite infestation in early and lower infestation in late nests, a seasonal trend that is in disagreement with the ecto-parasite avoidance hypothesis. Contrary, in overall lower-infected cleaned boxes, ecto-parasite prevalence remained equal throughout the season. However, the ecto-parasite burden had no obvious effect on breeding success. We conclude that the use of pellets revealing successful breeding attempt of the previous year as public information appeared to be important in the settlement decision of kestrels.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Jorma Nurmi for great help in inspecting and cleaning nest-boxes of kestrels. The study was financially supported by the Marietta Blau Grant of the Austrian Centre for International Cooperation and Mobility (to PS), by the University of Vienna (short-term grant abroad to PS), the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (to VV), the Foundation of Turku University (to VV) and the Academy of Finland (to EK, grant no. 123379, 136717 and 250709). We wish to thank Lise Ruffino, Julien Terraube and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful and constructive comments on the manuscript.

Ethical standards

All experiments and sampling were conducted in strict accordance with the current Finnish and EU law and followed the Weatherall Report and the guidelines for the treatment of animals in behavioural research and teaching (ASAB 2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Petra Sumasgutner, Ville Vasko, Rauno Varjonen & Erkki Korpimäki

  2. Department of Integrative Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Petra Sumasgutner

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  1. Petra Sumasgutner
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  2. Ville Vasko
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Correspondence to Petra Sumasgutner.

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Communicated by D. Rubenstein

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Sumasgutner, P., Vasko, V., Varjonen, R. et al. Public information revealed by pellets in nest sites is more important than ecto-parasite avoidance in the settlement decisions of Eurasian kestrels. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 68, 2023–2034 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1808-6

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