Social Organisation and Breeding Biology of the White-Shouldered Fairywren (Malurus Alboscapulatus)
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Emu - Austral Ornithology ISSN: 0158-4197 (Print) 1448-5540 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/temu20 Social organisation and breeding biology of the White-shouldered Fairywren (Malurus alboscapulatus) Erik D. Enbody, Jordan Boersma, John Anthony Jones, Matthew W. H. Chatfield, Serena Ketaloya, Doka Nason, Daniel T. Baldassarre, Jenny Hazlehurst, Olivia Gowen, Hubert Schwabl & Jordan Karubian To cite this article: Erik D. Enbody, Jordan Boersma, John Anthony Jones, Matthew W. H. Chatfield, Serena Ketaloya, Doka Nason, Daniel T. Baldassarre, Jenny Hazlehurst, Olivia Gowen, Hubert Schwabl & Jordan Karubian (2019) Social organisation and breeding biology of the White- shouldered Fairywren (Malurusalboscapulatus), Emu - Austral Ornithology, 119:3, 274-285, DOI: 10.1080/01584197.2019.1595663 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01584197.2019.1595663 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa View supplementary material UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 25 Apr 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 284 View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=temu20 EMU - AUSTRAL ORNITHOLOGY 2019, VOL. 119, NO. 3, 274–285 https://doi.org/10.1080/01584197.2019.1595663 Social organisation and breeding biology of the White-shouldered Fairywren (Malurus alboscapulatus) Erik D. Enbody a,b, Jordan Boersma c, John Anthony Jones a, Matthew W. H. Chatfieldd, Serena Ketaloyaa,e, Doka Nasona,e, Daniel T. Baldassarre f,g,h, Jenny Hazlehursta,i, Olivia Gowena, Hubert Schwablc and Jordan Karubian a aDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Tulane University, New Orleans, USA; bDepartment of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; cSchool of Biological Sciences, Center for Reproductive Biology, Washington State University, Pullman, USA; dSchool of Biodiversity Conservation, Unity College, Unity, USA; ePorotona Village, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea; fDepartment of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA; gMacaulay Library, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca, USA; hDepartment of Biological Sciences, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, USA; iDepartment of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The White-shouldered Fairywren (Malurus alboscapulatus) is a tropical passerine bird distributed across Received 6 December 2018 much of New Guinea. White-shouldered Fairywrens are among few species of fairywren with exclusively Accepted 12 March 2019 ff tropical distributions and di er from better studied congeners in Australia because subspecies vary by KEYWORDS female, but not male, coloration and morphology. As with many bird species in New Guinea, basic Fairywren; female demographic, social, morphological, and breeding data are limited. From 2011 to 2018 we documented ornamentation; life history; the basic biology of two subspecies representing extremes of the female ornamentation spectrum. Both tropical birds; Maluridae; subspecies form groups having an even operational sex ratio and appear to breed year-round. Extra-pair New Guinea; sexual paternity occurs in the subspecies with female ornamentation; comparable data are lacking for the dimorphism subspecies having unornamented females, but the greater scaled cloacal protuberance volume of males suggests similar or higher extra-pair paternity rates. Females of the ornamented subspecies are gen- erally larger than those lacking ornamentation, but exhibit reduced tail lengths, which is thought to serve as a signal of social dominance in other fairywrens. After first achieving adult-like plumage, males and ornamented females retain ornamented plumage year-round; however, only males in the sub- species with unornamented females appear to exhibit delayed plumage maturation. Our discussion highlights similarities and differences between White-shouldered Fairywren life histories and those of better studied Australian Malurus species; we focus on tropical vs. temperate environments and variable female ornamentation, and we identify priorities for future research. Introduction White-shouldered Fairywrens (Malurus alboscapula- tus) are grass-dwelling insectivorous birds commonly Fairywrens (Maluridae: Malurus)areafamiliargroupof observed in community gardens and Australo-Papuan passerine birds that have been the focus savannah throughout the island of New Guinea, ran- of considerable ornithological interest (Buchanan and ging from sea level to 2000 m (Schodde 1982; Rowley Cockburn 2013). In particular, research on Malurus and Russell 1997). The White-shouldered Fairywren fairywrens provides textbook examples of co-operative shares a most recent common ancestor with the breeding behaviour (Pruett-Jones and Lewis 1990; Australian bicoloured fairywrens (Driskell et al. 2011), Mulder et al. 1994) and its link to male plumage colora- and is sister to the Red-backed Fairywren tion (Webster et al. 2008), as well as sexual promiscuity (M. melanocephalus), suggesting a secondary Malurus with social monogamy (Brooker et al. 1990)anditsasso- recolonisation of New Guinea during a recent glacial ciation with male colouration (Dunn and Cockburn 1999; maximum (Rowley and Russell 1997; Rowley and Baldassarre and Webster 2013). However, for the malurid Russel 2007; Joseph et al. 2013). The other members species of New Guinea current life history information is of the bicoloured clade, M. melanocephalus limited largely to observational reports (Schodde 1982; and M. leucopterus, provide useful points of compar- Rowley and Russell 1997). These New Guinean species are ison with White-shouldered Fairywrens. Malurus mel- a priority for study, because the lack of information on anocephalus and M. leucopterus both exhibit delayed their life histories hinders comparative studies. CONTACT Erik D. Enbody [email protected] Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. EMU - AUSTRAL ORNITHOLOGY 275 plumage maturation in males but not females (Rowley females (Driskell et al. 2011;Josephet al. 2013), and and Russell 1995; Karubian 2002; Rathburn and provides a useful context in which to study processes Montgomerie 2003) and, as a consequence, males driving female ornament evolution – an area of growing breed either in an ornamented or unornamented interest among evolutionary ecologists (Amundsen 2000; (female-like) plumage phenotype. In the non-breeding Tobias et al. 2012). season, both these species moult to an unornamented Here, we present results of a multi-year study of the (brown) plumage and coalesce in larger social groups social organisation and breeding biology of the White- containing multiple social pairs (Rowley and Russell shouldered Fairywren of New Guinea, the first such study 1995; Lantz and Karubian 2017), while during the for a New Guinean Malurus species. We provide infor- breeding season they are facultative co-operative bree- mation on one White-shouldered Fairywren subspecies ders and exhibit social monogamy with high rates of where females are ornamented (M. a. moretoni; Figure 1) sexual promiscuity (Brouwer et al. 2017). The ways in and a second in which females lack ornamentation which, and degree to which, White-shouldered (M. a. lorentzi; Figure 1) and contextualise results with Fairywrens differ from members of this clade and the similar information from Australian congeners. broader genus have not been shown. White-shouldered Fairywrens are distinctive from bet- ter studied congeners in at least two key respects. First, Methods they have an exclusively tropical distribution, which may Study system and field methods affect mating system and social organisation. For exam- ple, latitudinal patterns of variation in the degree of sex- We studied two subspecies of White-shouldered ual dimorphism in Malurus (Johnson et al. 2013; Fairywrens in Papua New Guinea: Malurus alboscapulatus Karubian 2013) may be related to factors such as moult moretoni (moretoni hereafter) in the far south-east of the strategies (Wolfe et al. 2010), survival rates (Wiersma country, and Malurus alboscapulatus lorentzi (lorentzi et al. 2007) and life histories (Ricklefs 1976)thatalso hereafter) in the south-west (Figures 1 and S1). From tend to vary with latitude. Second, six White-shouldered 2011 to 2018 we studied moretoni in Milne Bay Province, Fairywren subspecies are recognised on the basis of var- in the village of Garuahi (150º29′ E, 10º13′ S, 0–10 m a.s.l.) iation in female ornamentation, whereas males are simi- and from 2014 to 2018 in the nearby village, Porotona (150° lar in plumage across all subspecies (Schodde 1982; 35′ E, 10°15′ S, 10–20 m a.s.l.). Based on similarities in the Rowley and Russell 1997; Enbody et al. 2017; Figure 1). traits we studied, we treat them as a single population. We This female ornamentation is derived recently, as sister also monitored lorentzi in Obo, Western Province (141°19′ taxa and most other Malurus possess unornamented