Long-term pair bonds are common in many large long-lived bird species but do also occur in small short-lived passerines. Mate retention and ‘divorce’ have been regarded as two sides of a strategy to increase reproductive success in Great Tits and Blue Tits as both occur regularly in these species. Both biotic (eg. food availability) or abiotic (eg. weather) factors can influence if the pair stay together or divorce within or between breeding seasons. Urban environment differs from rural environment regarding both biotic and abiotic factors leading to the birds need to cope with different challenges. However, the birds may choose different pair bonding strategy in urban and rural habitats to increase their fitness, up to date there is no study that investigated the differences in pair bonding in urban-rural comparison and its effect on fitness.
Aim of the study: Using a long-term dataset back till 2013, the project aim to study if urbanisation influence pair bonding, and if pair bonding has a direct effect on breeding success of great and blue tits.
Questions:
- Is there any difference in pair bonding (and/or divorce rate) between urban and rural environments?
- Does air or/and noise pollution influence pair bonding (and/or divorce rate)?
- Does pair bonding (and/or divorce) influence hatching success, nestling size?
Your tasks:
- Collect basic breeding data in 2025, following the individual breeding attempt, ringing nestlings and adults.
- Organise the data for your analysis back till 2013.
- Modelling climate, and pollution data
- Carry out the statistical analysis.
- Write your thesis.
You will learn to:
- handle and measure birds
- basic principles of databases and using different statistical tools to analyse your data
- use GIS for analysing spatial data
Starting date: 1st of April (but sooner is the better). Duration: 45-60 credits
Contact:
Main supervisor: Caroline Isaksson: caroline.isaksson@biol.lu.se
Co-supervisor: Zsófia Tóth: zsofia.toth@biol.lu.se