Arie van Noordwijk

Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) | NIOO-KNAW · Animal Ecology

Evidence that telomere length (TL) and dynamics can be interpreted as proxy for ‘life stress’ experienced by individuals stems largely from correlational studies. We tested for effects of an experimental increase of workload on telomere dynamics by equipping male great tits (Parus major) with a 0.9 gram backpack for a full year. In addition, we ana...

Evidence that telomere length (TL) and dynamics can be interpreted as proxy for ‘life stress’ experienced by individuals stems largely from correlational studies. We tested for effects of an experimental increase of workload on telomere dynamics by equipping male great tits (Parus major) with a 0.9 gram backpack for a full year. In addition, we ana...

We studied the relationship between temperature and the coexistence of great tit Parus major and blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus, breeding in 75 study plots across Europe and North Africa. We expected an advance in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer springs as a general response to climate warming and a delay in laying date and a...

Coexistence between great tits Parus major and blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus , but also other hole‐nesting taxa, constitutes a classic example of species co‐occurrence resulting in potential interference and exploitation competition for food and for breeding and roosting sites. However, the spatial and temporal variations in coexistence and its con...

Telomere length (TL) is increasingly used as a biomarker of senescence, but measuring telomeres remains a challenge. Within tissue samples, TL varies between cells and chromosomes. Class I telomeres are (presumably static) interstitial telomeric sequences, and terminal telomeres have been divided in shorter (Class II) telomeres and ultra‐long (Clas...

Migration is a widespread phenomenon across the animal kingdom as a response to seasonality in environmental conditions. Partially migratory populations are populations that consist of both migratory and residential individuals. Such populations are very common, yet their stability has long been debated. The inheritance of migratory activity is cur...

Many species show migratory behaviour in response to seasonal changes in environmental conditions. A peculiar, yet widespread phenomenon is partial migration, when a single population consists of both migratory and non-migratory individuals. There are still many open questions regarding the stability and evolutionary significance of such population...

With increasing numbers of many herbivorous waterfowl species, often foraging on farmland, the conflict with agriculture has intensified. One popular management tool is to scare birds off the land, often in association with shooting. However, the energy costs of flying are considerably higher than those of resting. Therefore, when birds fly off aft...

Survival of juveniles during the postfledging period can be markedly low, which may have major consequences on avian population dynamics. Knowing which factors operating during the nesting phase affect postfledging survival is crucial to understand avian breeding strategies. We aimed to obtain a robust set of predictors of postfledging local surviv...

Iteroparous organisms face a trade-off between reproduction and survival but knowledge of whether, how and when costs of long-term increases in workload are paid is scant. We increased locomotion costs for a whole year by equipping male great tits with a backpack during breeding, removing the backpacks one year later. We applied three different tre...

The recent trend for journals to require open access to primary data included in publications has been embraced by many biologists, but has caused apprehension amongst researchers engaged in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies. A worldwide survey of 73 principal investigators (Pls) with long-term studies revealed positive attitudes toward...

The recent trend for journals to require open access to primary data included in publications has been embraced by many biologists, but has caused apprehension amongst researchers engaged in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies. A worldwide survey of 73 principal investigators (Pls) with long-term studies revealed positive attitudes toward...

Telomere length predicts survival in birds, and many stressors that presumably reduce fitness have also been linked to telomere length. The response to selection of telomere length will be largely determined by the heritability of this trait; however, little is known about the genetic component of telomere length variation in animals other than hum...

Summary information on studies of the relationship between clutch size and nest size in different species of birds.

Nests are structures built to support and protect eggs and/or offspring from predators, parasites, and adverse weather conditions. Nests are mainly constructed prior to egg laying, meaning that parent birds must make decisions about nest site choice and nest building behavior before the start of egg-laying. Parent birds should be selected to choose...

Secondary hole nesting birds that do not construct nest holes themselves and hence regularly breed in nest boxes constitute important model systems for field studies in many biological disciplines with hundreds of scientists and amateurs involved. Those research groups are spread over wide geographic areas that experience considerable variation in...

Avian seasonal timing is a life-history trait with important fitness consequences and which is currently under directional selection due to climate change. To predict micro-evolution in this trait, it is crucial to properly estimate its heritability. Heritabilities are often estimated from pedigreed wild populations. As these are observational data...

Dispersal is an important process in ecology, but its measurement is difficult. In particular, natal dispersal—the net movement between site of birth and site of first reproduction—is important, since it determines population structure. Using simulated data, I study the claim that measuring dispersal in terms of distance-dependent recruitment rates...

The Netherlands holds internationally important numbers of Black-tailed Godwits Limosa limosa, and reports of a substantial population decline have prompted concern. One way of narrowing the list of possible causes of this decline is to identify the demographic processes responsible. For this reason, we conducted a survival analysis for the period...

The little owl (Athene noctua) has declined significantly in many parts of Europe, including the Netherlands. To understand the demographic mechanisms underlying their decline, we analysed all available Dutch little owl ringing data. The data set spanned 35 years, and included more than 24,000 ringed owls, allowing detailed estimation of survival r...

The process of ageing was long thought to be too infrequent to affect life-histories in natural populations. Long-term studies have, however, recently demonstrated ageing to be ubiquitous even in the wild, although confounding factors, such as emigration instead of mortality, or inter-population variation in rates of ageing have seldom been address...

The widespread use of artificial nestboxes has led to significant advances in our knowledge of the ecology, behaviour and physiology of cavity nesting birds, especially small passerines Nestboxes have made it easier to perform routine monitoring and experimental manipulation of eggs or nestlings, and also repeatedly to capture, identify and manipul...

Ring re-encounter data, in particular ring recoveries, have made a large contribution to our understanding of bird movements. However, almost every study based on ring re-encounter data has struggled with the bias caused by unequal observer distribution. Re-encounter probabilities are strongly heterogeneous in space and over time. If this heterogen...

The widespread use of artificial nestboxes has led to significant advances in our knowledge of the ecology, behaviour and physiology of cavity nesting birds, especially small passerines. Nestboxes have made it easier to perform routine monitoring and experimental manipulation of eggs or nestlings, and also repeatedly to capture, identify and manipu...

We still know remarkably little about the extent to which neutral markers can provide a biologically relevant description of population structure. In the present study, we address this question, and quantify microsatellite differentiation among a small, structured island population of great tits (Parus major), and a large mainland population 150 km...

Prey size was evaluated for seven passerine trans-Saharan migrant species at two spring stopover sites in Sardinia, Italy. The species considered were Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca, Spotted Flycatcher Muscicapa striata, Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus, Garden Warbler Sylvia borin, Whitethroat Sylvia communis, Willow Warbler Phylloscopus troch...

Estimates of genetic variation and selection allow for quantitative predictions of evolutionary change, at least in controlled laboratory experiments. Natural populations are, however, different in many ways, and natural selection on heritable traits does not always result in phenotypic change. To test whether we were able to predict the evolutiona...

Evolutionary change results from selection acting on genetic variation. For migration to be successful, many different aspects of an animal’s physiology and behaviour need to function in a co-coordinated way. Changes in one migratory trait are therefore likely to be accompanied by changes in other migratory and life-history traits. At present, we h...

Three case studies failed to demonstrate impacts of early environment or maternal effects on breeding in situations where they could have been expected. This leads to a number of methodological questions about the resolving power required to detect such impacts, but above all else to the conclusion that maternal effects and homeotic control are opp...

Genetic variation for ecologically important traits determines the potential for evolutionary changes and should be measured directly. Such measurements of genetic variation based on quantitative genetic theory rely on assumptions of environmental constancy. These assumptions are not likely to hold in nature. Instead, natural environments are struc...

Great Tits Parus major can reduce fruit damage in apple orchards by predating on caterpillars. A model by Mols (2003) predicted that damage reduction is mainly influenced by the hatching date of the Great Tit nestlings and the number of breeding pairs in the orchard. We tested these predictions by investigating predation pressure on caterpillars by...

The need for evolutionary studies on quantitative traits that integrate genetics is increasing. Studies on consistent individual differences in behavioural traits provide a good opportunity to do controlled experiments on the genetic mechanisms underlying the variation and covariation in complex behavioural traits. In this review we will highlight...

Understanding the capacity of natural populations to adapt to their local environment is a central topic in evolutionary biology. Phenotypic differences between populations may have a genetic basis, but showing that they reflect different adaptive optima requires the quantification of both gene flow and selection. Good empirical data are rare. Usin...

Individuals in a range of species consistently differ in their behavior towards mild challenges, over age and time. Differences have been found for several personality traits in a range of species. In great tits these traits have a genetic basis and are phenotypically correlated. Estimates of genetic correlations are, however, fundamental to unders...

Individuals of all vertebrate species differ consistently in their reactions to mildly stressful challenges. These typical reactions, described as personalities or coping strategies, have a clear genetic basis, but the structure of their inheritance in natural populations is almost unknown. We carried out a quantitative genetic analysis of two pers...

The White stork Ciconia ciconia has been the object of several successful reintroduction programmes in the last decades. As a consequence, populations have been monitored over large spatial scales. Despite these intense efforts, very few reliable estimates of life history traits are available for this species. Such general knowledge however constit...

Personalities are general properties of humans and other animals. Different personality traits are phenotypically correlated, and heritabilities of personality traits have been reported in humans and various animals. In great tits, consistent heritable differences have been found in relation to exploration, which is correlated with various other pe...

Data from birds ringed as chicks and recaptured during subsequent breeding seasons provide information on avian natal dispersal distances. However, national patterns of ring reports are influenced by recapture rates as well as by dispersal rates. While an extensive methodology has been developed to study survival rates using models that correct for...

The EURING code, which has been the European standard coding system for observations on marked birds, has undergone a major revision and extension resulting in the EURING EXCHANGE CODE 2000. Major aspects of change have a background in computer-technology, a shift in scientific questions and in the interaction between the two. Over the last decades...

Dispersal is a major determinant of the dynamics and genetic structure of populations, and its consequences depend not only on average dispersal rates and distances, but also on the characteristics of dispersing and philopatric individuals. We investigated whether natal dispersal correlated with a predisposed behavioural trait: exploratory behaviou...

Behaviour under conditions of mild stress shows consistent patterns in all vertebrates: exploratory behaviour, boldness, aggressiveness covary in the same way. The existence of highly consistent individual variation in these behavioural strategies, also referred to as personalities or coping styles, allows us to measure the behaviour under standard...

We investigated whether individual great tits, Parus major, vary consistently in their exploratory behaviour in a novel environment and measured the repeatability and heritability of this trait. Wild birds were caught in their natural habitat, tested in the laboratory in an open field test on the following morning, then released at the capture site...

We investigated the kinship structure of an island population of the Great Tit (Parus major). Kinship of birds could be inferred by comparing their family trees. Dispersal was also studied to explain the observed pattern of kinship. On the island of Vlieland the tits breed in several wooded areas. Both males and females preferred to breed in their...

We studied variation in small-scale swimming behavior (SSB) in four clones of Daphnia galeata (water flea) in response to predator infochemicals. The aim of this study was 3-fold. First, we tested for differences in SSB in Daphnia; second, we examined the potential of differences in SSB to explain survival probability under predation; and third we...

These days, investigations of evolutionary events in groups of organisms can be taken well beyond the just-so story. Analysis of how members of the cuckoo family became 'brood parasites' provides a wonderful example.

We experimentally show that in blue tits (Parus caeruleus) egg-laying date is causally linked to experience in the previous year. Females that received additional food in the nestling period in one year laid eggs later in the next year compared with the control birds, whatever the degree of synchronization with the natural food abundance in the pre...

Within-year variation in clutch size has been claimed to be an adaptation to variation in the individual capacity to raise offspring. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating brood size to one common size, and predicted that if clutch size is individually optimized, then birds with originally large clutches have a higher fitness than birds with or...

In seasonal environments, the main selection pressure on the timing of reproduction (the ultimate factor) is synchrony between offspring requirements and food availability. However, reproduction is initiated much earlier than the time of maximum food requirement of the offspring. Individuals should therefore start reproduction in response to cues (...

1. We tested the hypothesis that protein availability rather than energy availability constrains egg formation in great tits (Parus major L.) by providing them with two food supplements of different protein content in the prelaying and laying period of 1991 and 1992. 2. Timing of breeding, clutch size and egg size did not differ between the two foo...

Most migratory bird populations are composed of individuals that migrate and individuals that remain resident. While the role of ecological factors in maintaining this behavioral dimorphism has received much attention, the importance of genetic constraints on the evolution of avian migration has not yet been considered. Drawing on the recorded migr...

We use data from a long-term population study in combination with DNA fingerprint data to study the frequency of inbreeding and its effects on reproductive parameters in a blue tit population. Close inbreeding was very rare in this population. The proportion of unhatched eggs in a clutch was related to the degree of genetic similarity between the p...

Natal dispersal, the displacement from site of birth to site of reproduction, is an important process. It determines the spatial scale of population dynamics as well as the genetic structure of populations. Although some inferences can be made about dispersal from the measurement of genetic parameters, direct data on individuals marked at their sit...

Using the theoretical framework of phenotypic plasticity, we studied the timing of breeding in great tits (Parus major), combining proximate questions about its physiological causation and ultimate questions about its fitness consequences. The plasticity observed in the timing of breeding can be explained either as an adaptation to the best time fo...

1. We investigated the relation between the timing of great tit breeding, measured as the mean date of laying the first egg in each clutch, the timing of caterpillar availability, measured as median pupation dates of winter moth, selection for laying dates, measured from the recruitment into the local breeding population in subsequent years, and te...

1. Growth of Great Tit nestlings was significantly influenced by environmental variation consisting of experimentally altered brood sizes and natural temporal variation in food availability. 2. Two-day weight gains differed increasingly with age between early (good conditions) and late (poor conditions) broods. 3. Environmental conditions also affe...

ON poor, acidified soils in The Netherlands, an increasing number of great tits, Parus major, and other forest passerines, produce eggs with thin and porous shells1. Here we show that the egg-shell defects, and the related high incidence of clutch desertion and empty nests, are caused by calcium deficiency, that snail shells are the main calcium so...

Current population genetic and population dynamic models are inappropriate to judge the risk of extinction of small populations due to the combined effects of inbreeding, genetic drift, demographic stochasticity, and environmental stochasticity. Instead, a model based on the aggregated fates of individuals is advocated. The unequal distribution of...

A framework for combining questions about the physiological causation and the evolutionary explanation of phenotypic plasticity is discussed, focussing on the phenotype at the time of measurement. The framework is illustrated with two examples concerning the timing of reproduction. In the first example, egg-laying date in the great tit Parus major,...

Daily weight increments of nestling Great Tits are expressed as ratios of observed increment divided by the increment expected under favourable conditions. We used this ratio to examine the effects of local environmental conditions on nestling growth. We demonstrate a positive relationship between nestling growth and food availability at that time...

1. Fledging weight has been shown to correlate with survival in many bird species and, therefore, is an important component of fitness. Fledging weight results from growth during the nestling stage. Hence, environmental effects on nestling growth in altricial bird species play a key role in proximate explanations of selection after fledging. 2. We...

The phenotypic plasticities of life-history traits in 46 clones of the planktonic crustacean Daphnia magna were measured across two feeding conditions. Plasticity estimates for clutch sizes and offspring lengths of the first six clutches and for lengths of eight successive adult instars allowed us to compare plasticity between and within these thre...

Individual birds of many species laying earlier than the population average produce more offspring which survive to enter the subsequent breeding population. A shortage of resources early in the season is commonly supposed to force some females to delay their egg production beyond the time which would be best for offspring production. We sought to...

Investigates a genetic model in which two traits result from the acquisition and allocation of a single resource. Phenotypic values for the two traits are written as a product of the total amount of the resource acquired and the proportion allotted to each of them. Although multiplicative gene action determines the traits, the epistasis at the gene...

Evolutionary change requires natural selection in the presence of heritable variation for the trait(s) under selection. Since heritabilities and selection pressures are known to vary with environmental conditions, it is crucial to know how much genetic variation is expressed under which conditions. This study addresses the question of how the expre...

One of the main questions in micro-evolution is how genes interact with the environment in forming a phenotype, and to what extent the environmentally induced phenotypic variations are adaptive. One can think of the genes as coding for a program that processes information from the environment. This program is subjected to natural selection. Especia...

A reliable but not necessarily precise indication of the toxicity of a chemical product is frequently needed for the determination of its class of toxicity. Estimations of the LD50 carried out for this purpose often have a precision which is higher than necessary and so is the number of laboratory animals used. Alternative methods estimating an app...

We have analysed data on weight and tarsus length collected during a long-term study of natural populations of Great Tits to evaluate the relative importance of genetic variation in body size. Some of our data were collected over a 25-year period, and therefore include a relatively large sample of naturally occurring environmental conditions. An ov...

Final body size results when growth stops. In order to gain insight in the genotype-environment interactions affecting adult body size one must therefore study the growth process.

The control of spot pattern variation on both hindwing and forewing in 16 F1 broods of Maniola jurtina is analysed. Substantial additive genetic variance was demonstrated for each of the spot pattern characters. For example, estimates for heritability of hindwing spot-number were 066011 in males and 089011 in females. These estimates were essential...

In an analysis of Parus major data from Wytham Wood, Oxford, Greenwood, Harvey & Perrins (1979) (see 80L/0872) demonstrated that offspring resemble their parents in the distance moved from nestbox of birth to nestbox of first breeding. They interpreted this resemblance as heritable. A similar result may be obtained assuming that movements from one...

Using information taken from studies of great tit in The Netherlands, examines 1) the heritability of dispersal, as an illustration of the difficulties in identifying the proper null hypothesis and as an example of resemblance of relatives that seems to be entirely caused by the sharing of environments; 2) within-clutch variation in egg size, exemp...

During the long-term population study of the Great Tit, all nestlings were ringed and most parents were identified. This allows the construction of family-trees. In an island population of about 50 pairs we found a common ancestor in 19% of the clutches where both parents were identified and in 47% of the clutches where the geneaologies were comple...

About 40% of the population variation in the initiation dates of first clutches within years is genetically determined. The onset of laying, which is determined by the female, is not detectably influenced by spatial heterogeneity of the study area. There is a variable selection favoring early, middle, or late laying in some years. Over the study pe...