Variable laying times among King Rails (Rallus elegans) | Variación del tiempo entre puestas del rascón Rallus elegans
2018
Schroeder, Katie M. | McRae, Susan B.
Female birds tend to lay consecutive eggs in a clutch 24 h apart. Typically, this spacing results in individuals laying within a narrow interval corresponding to a time of day generalizable at the population level. In contrast to this trend, we found that females in a coastal-breeding population of King Rails (Rallus elegans) showed considerable variability in laying times. Variable laying times reveal that female King Rails are not constrained to a specific laying hour by circadian patterns of activity, as has been suggested for other species. We call for researchers to report temporal data on egg laying to revisit the evolutionary significance of laying times and to determine what factors affect, or are affected by, laying at a specific time of day.
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