Ruddy turnstones Arenaria interpres rapidly build pectoral muscle after raptor scares
2006
Dekinga, Anne, | Piersma, Theunis, | Hout, Piet J. van den, | Lubbe, Suzanne K., | Visser, G. Henk,
To cope with changes in the environment, organisms not only show behavioural butalso phenotypic adjustments. This is well established for the digestive tract. Here wepresent a first case of birds adjusting their flight machinery in response to predationrisk. In an indoor experiment, ruddy turnstones Arenaria interpres were subjected to anunpredictable daily appearance of either a raptor or a small gull (as a control). Ruddyturnstones experiencing threat induced by a flying raptor model, longer than aftersimilar passage by the gull model, refrained from feeding after this disturbance.Pectoral muscle mass, but not lean mass, responded in a course of a few days tochanges in the perceived threat of predation. Pectoral muscle mass increased afterraptor scares. Taking the small increases in body mass into account, pectoral musclemass was 3.6% higher than aerodynamically predicted for constant flight performance.This demonstrates that perceived risk factors may directly affect organ size.
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