Miguel Ángel Rendón

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · Department of Wetland Ecology

Studies on brood desertion in birds have been mainly conducted on species with biparental care, and less often on uniparental species. Females of many duck species remain with their ducklings, unassisted by males, during variable periods of time before the chicks can fledge. In this paper, we examined factors that influence brood desertion by femal...

It has been proposed that carotenoid-based pigmentation should indicate the ability of individuals to acquire food and that this should be reflected in their body condition. In this study we examined whether the body condition of Greater Flamingos Phoenicopterus roseus was related to plumage coloration and the interaction of both variables with sex...

Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to improve the match between their phenotype and heterogeneous environments. Theoretical models have argued that costs of maintaining the sensory and response machinery necessary for adaptive phenotypic plasticity are important determinants to the evolution of plasticity. Despite recurrent arguments invoking p...

Greater flamingos use cosmetic coloration by spreading uropygial secretions pigmented with carotenoids over their feathers, which makes the plumage redder. Because flamingos inhabit open environments that receive direct solar radiation during daytime, and carotenoids bleach when exposed to solar radiation, we expected that the plumage color would f...

Quail eggs have been widely used in field experiments, mainly to study factors associated with the risk of nest predation. Some shortcomings of using quail eggs in this type of study have been previously addressed (e.g., these eggs might be too big for some predators of eggs of small birds). Here, we show experimental evidence of another shortcomin...

Amphibian larvae are plastic organisms that can adjust their growth and developmental rates to local environmental conditions. The consequences of such developmental alterations have been studied in detail, both at the phenotypic and physiological levels. While largely unknown, it is of great importance to assess how developmental alterations affec...

Organisms are exposed to multiple environmental factors simultaneously to which they often respond behaviorally, morphologically and/or physiologically. Amphibian larvae are quite plastic and efficiently adjust their phenotype and physiology to the reigning local conditions. Here we tested whether the combination of predator presence and low water...

Colourful plumage is typical of males in species with conventional sex roles, in which females care for offspring and males compete for females, as well as in many monogamous species in which both sexes care for offspring. Reversed sexual dichromatism—more colourful females than males—is predominant in species with sex role reversal. In the latter...

Solar radiation is an important driver of animal coloration, not only because of the effects of coloration on body temperature but also because coloration may protect from the deleterious effects of UV radiation. Indeed, dark coloration may protect from UV, but may increase the risk of overheating. In addition, the effect of coloration on thermoreg...

Amphibian larvae are common prey to various types of predators, according to the type of aquatic system they develop in. When they detect water-borne chemical cues from predators (kairomones), amphibian larvae often produce inducible defenses. An important component of such defensesis the alteration of the shape of the larvae, which often consists...

Studies of risk-taking by breeding birds have frequently addressed the effect of brood value on the decisions taken by incubating birds when predators approach their nests. However, leaving eggs unattended during predator disturbance may expose embryos to other potentially harmful factors, to which parent birds should respond when making decisions...

Adults of all six flamingo species have rosy plumages. The flamingos acquire the carotenoid pigments that tinge their plumage from their diets, and are also able of metabolizing those pigments into others. Habitat characteristics may have affected which types of carotenoids are more commonly used by every species. The main function of coloration in...

In sexually dimorphic species, the parental effort of the smaller sex may be reduced due to competitive exclusion in the feeding areas by the larger sex, or physiological constraints. However, to determine gender effects on provisioning patterns other intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting parental effort should be accounted for. Greater flaming...

After being fed by their parents, Greater Flamingo chicks store food in their crops, which protrude outwards. We allocated the crop profiles of chicks to four categories to assess the relationship between body mass and crop profile variation, and so determine whether crop size can be used as an accurate index of the amount of food ingested, and to...

The conservation of many species depends on sustainable economic activities that shape their habitats. The economic use of these anthropogenic habitats may change quickly owing to world trade globalization, market reorientations, price volatility or shifts in subsidy policies. The recent financial crisis has produced a global impact on the world ec...

1. Understanding the impact of environmental variability on migrating species requires the estimation of sequential abiotic effects in different geographic areas across the life cycle. For instance, waterfowl (ducks, geese and swans) usually breed widely dispersed throughout their breeding range and gather in large numbers in their wintering headqu...

Desde 1986 se anillan flamencos en las colonias de cría andaluzas, en Fuente Piedra, Doñana y las marismas del Odiel. Una investigación que ayuda a conocer, entre otros datos, su tasa de crecimiento, su distribución, su reproducción o cómo les afecta la transformación de humedales.

Capital breeding refers to a strategy in which birds use body stores for egg formation, whereas income breeders obtain all resources for egg formation at breeding sites. Capital breeding should occur more in large-bodied species because the relative cost of carrying stores for egg formation becomes smaller with increasing body size. Based on a comp...

It was long thought that the colour of bird feathers does not change after plumage moult. However, there is increasing evidence that the colour of feathers may change due to abrasion, photochemical change and staining, either accidental or deliberate. The coloration of plumage due to deliberate staining, i.e. with cosmetic purposes, may help indivi...

We measured the hematocrit from greater flamingo chicks Phoenicopterus roseus over 4years to test whether this blood parameter was related to the nutritional condition of chicks, as there are controversial results on whether hematocrit may be used as an index of body condition. We also tested whether hematocrit increased with chick age, as there wo...

Monitoring programs for the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus have been implemented in several colonies of the Mediterranean basin and northwest Africa. Methodologies used to obtain estimates of population sizes, breeding success, and demographic parameters may substantially differ among localities. It is important to attain a consensus on met...

Monitoring programs for the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus have been implemented in several colonies of the Mediterranean basin and northwest Africa. Methodologies used to obtain estimates of population sizes, breeding success, and demographic parameters may substantially differ among localities. It is important to attain a consensus on met...

We collected wing cover feathers from Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus chicks at the colonies of Ebro Delta (NE Spain), Fuente de Piedra (S Spain), Garaet Ezzemoul (NE Algeria) and Macchiareddu (Sardinia, Italy) to know whether diet quality (as determined using stable isotopes of N and C) is affected by colony size. Isotopic values of N and C...

In this paper, we present the main results of the long term study and conservation program of the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus in the Fuente de Piedra Lake from October 1983 to September 2007. The great annual and inter-annual variability of breeding numbers (0-39,593 flamingos) is related to the temporal and unpredictable character of th...

The breeding population of Greater Flamingo in Spain during 2007 is 18,876- 19,076 pairs, which produced 3,601 chicks. Breeding success was only verified in three wetlands: Fuente de Piedra (15,076 breeding pairs (79.03%) and 2,658 chicks fledged); the Guadalquivir marshes (2,000 breeding pairs (10.48%) and just 52 chicks fledged); and the Ebro del...

The Guadalquivir Marshes or Doñana wetland complex is the most important wintering site for migratory waterbirds in the Mediterranean region. However, there is a lack of previous information on the status of different species in this area. Using monthly aerial counts conducted from 1978 to 2005, we analysed the size of wintering populations of 21 w...

Greater flamingos in southern Spain foraged in areas distant from a breeding site, spending 4-6 days in foraging areas between successive visits to the colony to feed their chicks. During four years, we took blood samples from chicks to ascertain whether there were interannual variations in several blood parameters, indicative of food quality and f...

Connectivity among habitat patches has mainly been studied in relation to species-specific behaviours. However, the movements of animals among patches may have different functions, and tolerance to gaps between habitat patches may vary between these functions. We tracked the movements of greater flamingos during the breeding and post-breeding perio...

In a previous survey of otters (Lutra lutra L. 1758) in Spain, different causes were invoked to explain the frequency of the species in each province. To find common causes of the distribution of the otter in Spain, we recorded a number of spatial, environmental and human variables in each Spanish province. We then performed a stepwise linear multi...

The spatial distribution of individuals fits an ideal despotic distribution (IDD) model when some individuals prevent others from settling in a high-quality habitat, so that the last group of individuals is forced to use lower-quality habitats in which their fitness is lower. A critical assumption of the IDD model is that individuals using the lowe...

The nocturnal movements of breeding Greater Flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber roseus) between Fuente de Piedra Lake (Fuente de Piedra, southern Spain) and foraging areas was studied from 1986 to 1988. Fuente de Piedra is the only seasonal lake in Europe where Greater Flamingos breed regularly. Analysis of color-banded birds and fluctuation in flaming...