Vulnerability to pine sawfly damage decreases with site fertility but the opposite is true with Scleroderris canker damage; results from Finnish ICP Forests and NFI data

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Differences in incubation behaviour and niche separation of two competing flycatcher species

Food availability sets the stage for incubation behaviour of a female bird and thereby indirectly determines the nest temperature, which in turn affects development and metabolism of avian embryos. Changes in development and metabolism in turn are known to influence offspring's ability to adjust to environmental changes later in life. However, few studies have investigated the role of interspecific differences in incubation behaviour in relation to niche separation between competing sibling species. We studied the effects of habitat quality (in terms of caterpillar availability) on incubation behaviour of two ecologically similar and closely related species, collared and pied flycatchers (Ficedula albicollisandF. hypoleuca), in their hybrid zone on the island of oland, Sweden. Even though both species prefer caterpillar-rich deciduous forests as nesting sites, collared flycatchers, whose nestlings have higher energetic demands, are able to nest only in deciduous forests, whereas pied flycatchers have more flexible habitat requirements. Overall, higher food availability was associated with increased nest attendance, higher incubation temperature and a lower number of foraging trips across species. In addition, collared flycatchers had more frequent and shorter foraging trips across habitat types, allocated more heat to eggs and therefore maintained higher nest temperatures compared to pied flycatchers. We argue that the higher heat allocation or the need to maintain a higher nest temperature for embryo development may constrain collared flycatchers to focus on relatively more profitable prey. Our results highlight the importance of considering incubation behaviour in the context of understanding species differences in niche use. Significance statement Niche separation plays an important role in mitigating effects of competition between closely related species. Whether species differences in incubation behaviour relate to differences in niche use remains unknown. We compared incubation behaviour of two sympatric flycatcher species that differ in sensitivity to food availability. The competitively more dominant and larger species, the collared flycatcher, whose nestlings are more sensitive to food shortages, made more frequent foraging trips but allocated more heat to eggs, leading to higher nest temperature despite lower nest attendance, compared to pied flycatchers. These interspecific differences may be a result of differences in embryo sensitivity or female physiology and contribute to the niche separation between the species, which in turn can facilitate coexistence.Peer reviewe

Hybrid Dysfunction Expressed as Elevated Metabolic Rate in Male Ficedula Flycatchers

Peer reviewe

Non-Gaussian component analysis: testing the dimension of the signal subspace

Dimension reduction is a common strategy in multivariate data analysis which seeks a subspace which contains all interesting features needed for the subsequent analysis. Non-Gaussian component analysis attempts for this purpose to divide the data into a non-Gaussian part, the signal, and a Gaussian part, the noise. We will show that the simultaneous use of two scatter functionals can be used for this purpose and suggest a bootstrap test to test the dimension of the non-Gaussian subspace. Sequential application of the test can then for example be used to estimate the signal dimension

Species and abundance of ectoparasitic flies (Diptera) in pied flycatcher nests in Fennoscandia

Peer reviewe

Difference in plasticity of resting metabolic rate - the proximate explanation to different niche breadth in sympatric Ficedula flycatchers

Variation in relative fitness of competing recently formed species across heterogeneous environments promotes coexistence. However, the physiological traits mediating such variation in relative fitness have rarely been identified. Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is tightly associated with life history strategies, thermoregulation, diet use, and inhabited latitude and could therefore moderate differences in fitness responses to fluctuations in local environments, particularly when species have adapted to different climates in allopatry. We work in a long-term study of collared (Ficedula albicollis) and pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) in a recent hybrid zone located on the Swedish island of Oland in the Baltic Sea. Here, we explore whether differences in RMR match changes in relative performance of growing flycatcher nestlings across environmental conditions using an experimental approach. The fitness of pied flycatchers has previously been shown to be less sensitive to the mismatch between the peak in food abundance and nestling growth among late breeders. Here, we find that pied flycatcher nestlings have lower RMR in response to higher ambient temperatures (associated with low food availability). We also find that experimentally relaxed nestling competition is associated with an increased RMR in this species. In contrast, collared flycatcher nestlings did not vary their RMR in response to these environmental factors. Our results suggest that a more flexible nestling RMR in pied flycatchers is responsible for the better adaptation of pied flycatchers to the typical seasonal changes in food availability experienced in this hybrid zone. Generally, subtle physiological differences that have evolved when species were in allopatry may play an important role to patterns of competition, coexistence, or displacements between closely related species in secondary contact.Peer reviewe

k-Step shape estimators based on spatial signs and ranks

In this paper, the shape matrix estimators based on spatial sign and rank vectors are considered. The estimators considered here are slight modifications of the estimators introduced in Dümbgen (1998) and Oja and Randles (2004) and further studied for example in Sirkiä et al. (2009). The shape estimators are computed using pairwise differences of the observed data, therefore there is no need to estimate the location center of the data. When the estimator is based on signs, the use of differences also implies that the estimators have the so called independence property if the estimator, that is used as an initial estimator, has it. The influence functions and limiting distributions of the estimators are derived at the multivariate elliptical case. The estimators are shown to be highly efficient in the multinormal case, and for heavy-tailed distributions they outperform the shape estimator based on sample covariance matrix.peerReviewe