Field: Environmental Science › EcologyType: No effect foundArea: ecologyTarget: Interaction between weather and supplementary food in red kite reproductionStage: full study
Hypothesis
Food availability and weather should interact, so that supplementary feeding buffers breeding red kites against adverse weather.
What failed
A feeding experiment run across four years with contrasting weather found no support for interactive effects of weather and food availability on any reproductive parameter; brood loss, nestling survival and development responded to rainfall, low temperature and food supply separately and additively.
Broken assumption
Extra food lets breeding birds compensate for bad weather.
Why
The authors reason that parental life-history trade-offs prevent an interaction, leaving weather and food as crucial but separate determinants of productivity.
From the published paper: Nägeli et al. Oecologia, 2021. ↗CC BY