Presentation Details
| Severe Wildfires Alter Behavior-Performance Relationships in a Ground-nesting Songbird Jacob Johnson, Andrew Sih, Thomas Hahn. University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA |
Abstract
As fire regimes accelerate worldwide, understanding how animals cope with the after-effects of fire is critical. We studied interactions between behavior and performance indices from 2023-2025 in the Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis), a ground nesting songbird, examining how the interplay of behavioral type and individual performance shifted within and between severely burned and unburned study sites, as well as how time-since-fire impacted these relationships. We compared territorial aggression with territory quality and body condition in both burned and unburned habitat throughout Lassen National Forest. Our findings suggest that territorial aggression had a much stronger relationship with performance in postfire habitat, suggesting that burned environments may favor individuals with highly aggressive behavioral types via competition for rare high-quality territories. While aggression in burned habitats was higher for all three years of our study, behavioral differences between burned and unburned habitats decreased with postfire recovery. We highlight how extreme environments may reveal a functionality behind variable behavioral types that can otherwise be experimentally elusive.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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