| Title | Birds Warned of Food Shortages by Neighbor Birds Change Physiology and Behavior to Prepare | |
| Date | Sunday July 03 2022, @01:00PM | |
| Author | mrpg | |
| Topic | ||
| from the little-birdie-told-me dept. | ||
Birds warned of food shortages by neighbor birds change physiology and behavior to prepare:
Songbirds learning from nearby birds that food supplies might be growing short respond by changing their physiology as well as their behavior, research by the Oregon State University College of Science shows.
After receiving social information from food-restricted neighbors for three days, the red crossbills in the study raised their pace of consumption, increased their gut mass and maintained the size of the muscle responsible for flight when their own eating opportunities were subsequently limited to two short feeding periods per day.
Findings of the study by OSU's Jamie Cornelius, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that birds can use social information about food shortages to effect an adaptive advantage for survival.
Journal Reference:
Advance social information allows red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) to better conserve body mass and intestinal mass during food stress, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.0516)
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printed from SoylentNews, Birds Warned of Food Shortages by Neighbor Birds Change Physiology and Behavior to Prepare on 2023-07-17 21:14:59