Affiliation:
1. Institute of Marine & Environmental Sciences University of Szczecin Szczecin Poland
2. Department of Vertebrate Ecology and Zoology, Faculty of Biology University of Gdańsk Gdańsk Poland
Abstract
AbstractInterspecific adoption is an intriguing topic in behavioral and evolutionary ecology. As it is a rare phenomenon, seldom documented in the literature, reports of interspecific adoption based on solid data are particularly valuable. A long‐term and extensive monitoring programme involving a local population of European blackbirds (Turdus merula, hereafter blackbird) has yielded, among other things, observations of alloparental behavior exhibited by blackbirds toward fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) nestlings (a single nest, the first‐ever record) and fledglings (12 cases in all). We discuss the observations in the context of the available literature.
Subject
Nature and Landscape Conservation,Ecology,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics