"Sexual conflict and parental care in the Kentish plover"

Tamás Székely
University of Bath
United Kingdom

Wednesday, 25th February 2004: 4.00 - 5.00pm

DBS Conference Room
Blk S3, Level 5, Department of Biological Sciences
The National University of Singapore
Science Drive 4

Visitors may park at Carpark 10
See map

Host: A/P N. Sodhi

About the talk
Male and female birds have a shared interest in raising their young, but since care is costly, each parent would prefer the other to do the hard work. One of the clearest examples of post-zygotic sexual conflict, i.e. sexual conflict over care, is offspring desertion whereby one parent terminates care before the offspring are fully independent. I will investigate the conflict between parents using a small precocial shorebird, the Kentish Plover, as my model system. Experimental manipulations of the costs and benefits of brood care in the natural habitat of Kentish Plover suggest that there is a sexual conflict over desertion. I will discuss how the parents resolve this conflict and how they settle for an agreement over care provisioning.

About the speaker
Dr Tamas Szekely is currently a lecturer at the University of Bath as well as a Senior Scientific Adviser at Szent Istvan University, Budapest and is also a Visiting Scientist at the University of Bristol. His research aim is to understand how animals solve the challenges imposed on them by their environment and his preferred study subjects are birds. Apart from resolving the issue of sexual conflict in parental care in Kentish Plovers, he also studies the breeding systems in shorebirds and sexual size dimorphism in shorebirds and seabirds.

ALL ARE WELCOME!  

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