bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.18.427196; this version posted January 19, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Long-term changes in the breeding biology of a New Zealand bellbird population 2 suggest plasticity in life-history responses to ecological restoration 3 4 Michelle M. Roper1*, Aaron, M.T. Harmer1 and Dianne H Brunton1 5 6 1School of Natural and Computational Sciences, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand 7 8 *Corresponding author: 9 Email:
[email protected] 10 11 Keywords: New Zealand bellbird, life history, breeding, reproduction, ecology, restoration bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.18.427196; this version posted January 19, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 12 Abstract 13 Ecological restoration projects provide excellent opportunities to study how animals adapt 14 their life-history strategies in response to changeable environments. A fundamental way 15 animals can optimise reproductive success in changing conditions is trading-off aspects of 16 their breeding system. The New Zealand bellbird (Anthornis melanura) has had a long-term 17 presence on the small restoration island, Tiritiri Matangi Island (Tiri), spanning the island’s 18 degraded agricultural past to its current extensively restored state.