Meeting Abstract
P2.133 Tuesday, Jan. 5 Seasonal Changes in Nest Maintenance Behavior of Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) PETERSEN, Christopher L. *; GRASSO, Frank W. ; The BioMimetic and Cognitive Robotics Lab, Brooklyn College, CUNY; Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, The Graduate Center, CUNY Chris.p5692@gmail.com
Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), though native to Argentina, are an invasive parrot species found throughout North America. Over the last 30 years, they successfully formed stable, localized colonies at sites from Florida to New England and from New York to California. They are rare amongst parrots and birds generally, in their construction of large, multi-chambered, stick nests and in that they communally maintain them year-round rather than just during the breeding season. In the past 10 years, our laboratory has studied the nesting activities of over 90 monk parakeet nests in Brooklyn, NY. Here we report on intensive focal studies of 2 nests located on the Brooklyn College campus for which extensive activity data were available dating back nine years. We made video recordings of nest-construction behaviors over a 6-month period that included the mating, egg incubation and fledging periods. From these videos we scored the frequency with which the parakeets added, manipulated, relocated, and removed sticks from these nests. From these measures developed a measure of nest maintenance activity. We found that nest maintenance activity declined significantly but did not cease during the fledging period F(2,27) = 3.57 p < 0.05. Specifically, stick addition F(2,27) = 6.07 p < 0.01 and on-nest stick manipulation F(2,27) = 3.84 p < 0.05, differed significantly during the fledging period compared to the incubation and mating periods. We suggest that this surge and subsequent decrease in nest construction activity, is typical of hormonally triggered nesting behavior in birds. And raise the question of whether the year-round nest maintenance activity is insensitive to the changing hormone levels that that regulate nest construction behavior during the mating and incubation periods.
