Authors: Alfonso Marzal Maribel Reviriego Ignacio G Hermosell Javier Balbontín Staffan Bensch Carmen Relinque Laura Rodríguez Luz GarciaLongoria Florentino de Lope
Publish Date: 2012/09/11
Volume: 171, Issue: 4, Pages: 853-861
Abstract
Carryover effects take place when events occurring in one season influence individual performance in a subsequent season Blood parasites eg Plasmodium and Haemoproteus have strong negative effects on the body condition of their hosts and could slow the rate of feather growth on the wintering grounds In turn these winter moult costs could reduce reproductive success in the following breeding season In house martins Delichon urbica captured and studied at a breeding site in Europe we used ptilochronology to measure growth rate of tail feathers moulted on the winter range in Africa and assessed infection status of blood parasites transmitted on the wintering grounds We found a negative association between haemosporidian parasite infection status and inferred growth rate of tail feathers A low feather growth rate and blood parasite infections were related to a delay in laying date in their European breeding quarters In addition clutch size and the number of fledglings were negatively related to a delayed laying date and blood parasite infection These results stress the importance of blood parasites and feather growth rate as potentially mechanisms driving carryover effects to explain fitness differences in wild populations of migratory birdsWe thank to W Douglas Robinson and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript This study was funded by research projects of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science CGL200908976 Junta of Extremadura PRI08A116 and University of Extremadura A726 AM IGH and LGL were supported by grants from Spanish Ministry of Education and Science JC20110405 BES200715549 and BES2010030295 respectively SB was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council 62120075193 LR was supported by a collaboration grant of UEx All the experiments comply with the current laws of Spain where the experiments were performed
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