Jianqiang Li

Beijing Forestry University · School of Ecology and Nature Conservation

Urbanization is transforming ecosystems at a global scale and at an increasing rate, and its profound consequences for wildlife have been well documented. Understanding how animals thrive in the urban environment and how this environment affects (co-)evolutionary processes remains an important challenge. Urban environments can provide resources suc...

The arms race between brood parasites and their hosts provides a classic model to study coevolution. Hosts often reject the parasitic egg, and brood parasites should therefore select host nests in which the colour of the eggs best matches that of their own. Although this hypothesis has received some support, direct experimental evidence is still la...

Cerebral lateralization, which is often reflected in an individual’s behavioral laterality (e.g., handedness and footedness), may bring animals certain benefits such as enhanced cognitive performance. Although the lateralization–cognition relationship has been widely studied in humans and other animals, current evidence supporting their relationshi...

Brood parasitic cuckoos and their hosts serve as model systems for studying host–parasite coevolution. Egg-rejection behavior constitutes an effective defense against brood parasitism, but some host species show phenotypic plasticity in egg-rejection behavior. Direct exposure to a cuckoo near the nest can increase egg-rejection likelihood, and long...

In species that are subject to brood parasitism, individuals often vary in their responses to parasitic eggs, with some rejecting the eggs while others do not. While some factors, such as host age (breeding experience), the degree of egg matching and the level of perceived risk of brood parasitism have been shown to influence host decisions, much o...

Egg rejection behaviour is a host strategy adopted by birds against brood parasitism. The optimal acceptance threshold hypothesis predicts that, when the frequency or risk of parasitism increases, host acceptance thresholds should become more restrictive. Here, we investigated egg rejection behaviour in the Daurian redstart, a cavity-nesting host o...

Background Research activities have often been thought to potentially influence avian nesting success by increasing nest predation rates. Although recent studies of species building open nests and cavity nests suggest that research disturbance does not generally induce nest predation, whether it is also the case in species building domed-nests rema...

Nest predation risk is an important factor that may promote the evolution of adaptive parental reproductive strategies in animals. In altricial birds, where parents feed their offspring at the nest for a period of time, parent birds must balance the benefit from increased nest visits and the cost from increased nest predation resulting from their n...

Behavioral lateralization, which is associated with the functional lateralization of the two brain hemispheres, commonly exists in animals and can provide an individual with benefits such as enhanced cognition and dual tasking. Lateral bias in limb use, as a type of behavioral lateralization, occur in many species, but the reasons for the coexisten...

Interacting with relatives provides opportunities for fitness benefits via kin-selected cooperation, but also creates potential costs through kin competition and inbreeding. Therefore, a mechanism for the discrimination of kin from non-kin is likely to be critical for individuals of many social species to maximize their inclusive fitness. Evidence...

In socially monogamous species with bi-parental care, males may face a trade-off between providing parental care and pursuing extra-pair matings. The "parenting-mating trade-off" hypothesis predicts that high-quality males-who have greater potential to gain extra-pair matings, for example, larger males usually win the competition for extra-pair mat...

Animal dispersal patterns have important implications for many biological processes, but the measurement of dispersal is challenging and often requires the use of complementary approaches. In this study, we investigated the local-scale sex-biased dispersal pattern in a social bird, the black-throated tit (Aegithalos concinnus), in central China. Sp...

Animal dispersal patterns have important implications for many biological processes, but the measurement of dispersal is challenging and often requires the use of complementary approaches. In this study, we investigated the local-scale sex-biased dispersal pattern in a social bird, the black-throated tit (Aegithalos concinnus), in central China. Sp...

Natural selection should favor adoption of parental strategies that maximize fitness when allocating investment among offspring. In birds, begging displays often convey information of nestling need and quality, allowing parents to make adaptive food allocation decisions. We investigated how adults utilized cues likely to represent nestling competit...

Abstract Background Nest predation is usually the main cause of bird nest failure. ‘Predation avoidance hypothesis’ of nest-site selection predicts that birds should prefer nest-sites with higher nesting success. We investigated the relationship between nest height and nest fate in Silver-throated Tits (Aegithalos glaucogularis) and asked whether t...

Animals that breed seasonally often use the same territory where they successfully produced young previously. Intra-specific competition may be intense for these high-quality territories, and therefore, natural selection should favour behaviour of territory owners to reduce such competition. Hair-crested drongos, Dicrurus hottentottus, a territory-...

To explore the nest survival rate of Reeves's pheasant (Syrmaticus reevesii) and the nest-site factors that affect it, we conducted artificial nest experiments with reference to natural nests at Dongzhai National Nature Reserve (DNNR), Henan Province and Pingjingguan, Hubei Province from April to June 2014 simulating the situation in its early and...

Individuals that retain their former partners often perform better than conspecifics that switch partners. This may be due to high-quality individuals being more faithful to their partners and more productive. Investigations of the fitness benefits of mate retention that also control for potential confounding effects of individuals are scarce. We s...

Sex allocation theory predicts that parents should adjust their investment between female and male offspring when the fitness return of producing them differs. Genome-wide heterozygosity is related to many aspects of individual fitness, and an individual’s heterozygosity is usually determined by the genetic characteristics of its parents. When hete...

Background The Hair-crested Drongo (Dicrurus hottentottus) exhibits a unique nest-dismantling behavior after the fledging of the young. One hypothesis explaining this behavior is dismantling one’s own nest may reduce potential competition for nest sites in the following breeding season because suitable breeding habitat might be limited, and sites a...

Brooding is a major breeding investment of parental birds during the early nestling stage, and has important effects on the development and survival of nestlings. Investigating brooding behavior can help to understand avian breeding investment strategies. From January to June in 2013 and 2014, we studied the brooding behaviors of long-tailed tits (...

The sex ratio of a population is an important demographic parameter, but compared with breeding populations, the sex ratios of avian winter populations have received relatively little attention. The orange-flanked bush-robin (Tarsiger cyanurus) is a migratory species whose plumage is sexually dimorphic with delayed plumage maturation wherein first-...

Choice of mating partners may affect fitness. Both phenotypic and genetic traits have been shown to play roles in the mating processes of animals. We investigated the roles of phenotypic and genetic characteristics in the patterns of social mating in the Silver-throated Tit (Aegithalos glaucogularis), a sexually monochromatic species that exhibits...

When benefits exceed costs, natural selection may favor adults that develop the ability to recognize and preferentially direct care toward their own offspring to maximize their fitness. Investigations into the ability of adults to recognize offspring in offspring's early development period may help to understand when the ability of kin recognition...

The explanation for extra-pair paternity (EPP) variation continues to attract research interest in the area of avian breeding systems. Comparisons among closely related species are recommended to explore factors that affect EPP rate variations. We utilised microsatellite markers to investigate extra-pair paternity in two sympatric populations of co...

Although knowledge of breeding biology is fundamental for investigating the variation and evolution of avian reproductive strategies, research on Asian Aegithalos tits remains limited. The breeding biology of sympatric populations of Black-throated Bushtits (Aegithalos concinnus) and Silver-throated Bushtits (A. glaucogularis) was studied in the Do...

Ultrasonic communication in vertebrates is attracting increasing research interest. To determine if ultrasonic vocali�ation is common in birds, we recorded their vocali�ations with ultrasound detectors in the Dong�hai National Nature Reserve of Henan Province, China. �e found varying degrees of high fre-. �e found varying degrees of high fre-quency...

The black-throated tit, Aegithalos concinnus, and long-tailed tit, A. caudatus, are two widely-distributed species of Aegithalidae. They are thought to be monomorphic and thus difficult to differentiate between sexes in the field. We determined the sex of 296 black-throated tits and 129 long-tailed tits using DNA analysis, evaluated their sexual si...

The primer pair sex1/sex2, which can be widely applied for sex identification in Gal-liform species, was used to determine the sex of 17 Passeriform species. As CHD-W fragments tended to be preferentially amplified, which may cause unnecessary misidentification in bird species with little difference between CHD-Z and CHD-W, we modified sex1 and sex...

Estudiamos un comp ortamiento único de desmantelamiento de los nidos después del emplumamiento de los polluelos por parte de Dicrurus hottentottus en la Reserva Natural Nacional Dongzhai, Provincia Henan, China, durante el verano de 2007. De los 13 nidos que emplumaron polluelos, 12 fueron desmantelados por los adultos que construyeron el nido, des...

The Dabie Shan (Dabie Mountains) range, straddling Henan, Hubei and Anhui provinces in central China, harbours a rich bird diversity, representing a transition between Palaearctic and Oriental realms Although historical information is available on the avifauna of this region, no recent comprehensive bird survey has been carried out In this paper we...