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Study on Behaviours of Mandarin Duck during Breeding Seasons

Author: YaoDi
Tutor: WangHaiTao
School: Northeast Normal University
Course: Zoology
Keywords: Mandarin Duck nest-box time budget Egg recognition Habitat selection
CLC: Q958
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 64
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Abstract

Mandarin Ducks was listed as a Class II key state protection animal of China and BirdLife International (2000) listed the Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) as a least concern species. The species winters in eastern, central and southern China .From 2004 we installed nest boxes in Zuojia Nature Reserve in northeast China, and then the Mandarin Ducks began to settle down and breed in nest boxes.Investment in the production or care of offspring decreases the amount of time and energy available for self-maintenance activities. In this study time budget and activity rhythm of Mandarin Duck during daytime had been studied. The results showed that the Incubation behaviors of Mandarin Duck include Sit-in-nest behavior, preening, recess, turning-eggs behavior and other behaviors. Among them sit-in-nest, preening, recess and turning-eggs behavior take up 80.2%, 9.0%, 6.5% and 4.3%. Two peaks are characteristic of preening behavior, rang from 9:00 to 10:00 and 14:00 to 15:00 respectively.Conspecific brood parasitism (CBP), an alternative female reproductive tactic in Mandarin Duck, has now been documented in 234 species of birds. Egg recognition and rejection was used as a defense tactic by hosts of avian brood parasites to reduce the costs of parasitism. In this study, an egg model was introduced into 13 nests during laying period and the rejection rate is 46.15%. Mandarin Duck responses to experimental egg model did not differ significantly between parasitized nest and un-parasitized nest.There is growing evidence that birds are able to track variations in local breeding habitat quality, and empirical studies have described many possible cues for breeding habitat selection, such as breeders their own reproductive success, information on environmental factors affecting breeding success, information from conspecifics and interspecifics. In this study, we experimentally test whether the nest materials are used as cues to make breeding nest selection decisions in a group of birds, including Mandarin Duck ,breeding inside nest boxes by manipulating nest materials. Boxes containing nest materials of Eurasian Red Squirrels and artificial nest materials (dry leaves and branches) were selected more frequently by Mandarin Duck.This paper presents the result of a study in the nest site selection of the Mandarin Duck. It was shown that the first three principal components are greater than 1 and cumulative percentage reaches 63.675% .

Study on Behaviours of Mandarin Duck during Breeding Seasons

Abstract

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