The House Sparrow Study

My students and I have been studying the social behavior of House Sparrows since 1992. We have investigated an array of questions  with financial support from the National Science Foundation. This work combines a long-term field study just outside of Lexington with birds that are year-round residents, and a complex of aviaries at the Ecological Research Facility for more controlled circumstances.  Below I describe some of the specific questions we've asked and, in some cases, some of the results.

                                                       

Some Sparrow Poetry!

The Projects

The following are some of the subprojects we are pursuing in the house sparrows with information on the main questions being asked. Some of these are nearly finished, whereas others are only beginning. The project has been rewarding not only scientifically, but because it has been a team effort. Undergraduates, graduate students working on Master's and Ph. D. degrees, and post-docs have worked well together and with me to pursue each component of the study. Prospective students could easily develop their own angles on these questions. I am also a founding member of GLOBALHOSP, a web-based initiative to enhance the collaborative study of house sparrows around the world.

1. The function of male plumage traits  in free-living sparrows [field site].

  • Do male plumage traits affect reproductive success, including success at extra-pair fertilizations? (see Stewart et al. 2006)

  • How might plumage traits influence male-male interactions over nest sites? (project ongoing)

  • How do plumage traits affect social interactions within winter flocks, especially given differences between males and females? [see Hein et al. 2003; other experiments still in progress]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. The effects of circumstances on the development and expression of female mate preference. These studies make use of our aviary facility.

  • Do females prefer certain types of males in nature and in aviary tests? [Data being analyzed]

  • Does female preference depend on their own social rank? [Data being analyzed]

  • How might prior knowledge of specific males or males in general affect female mate choice? [Data being analyzed]

 

 

 

3. Genetic and environmental influences on male and female traits, as measured through cross-fostering experiments.

  • Does variation in the nestling traits of size, condition, feather development, and cellular immune response have a genetic or environmental basis? [Westneat et al. 2004]

  • What is the potential genetic variation in adult traits, especially the sexually dimorphic plumage of males? [Data are still being analyzed]

 

M        F     M      F      F       F      M     M    M     F      F

4. Do house sparrows adjust sex allocation in response to factors hypothesized to influence sex ratio evolution? [see Westneat et al. 2002]

  • Is the primary sex ratio biased?
  • Are males more costly to produce than females?
  • Do higher quality females produce more males?

 

 

5. Connections between diet, molt and immune system function using artificial diets. These studies explore aspects of the condition-dependent link with immunity discussed in Westneat and Birkhead (1998).

  • Do specific components of diets, such as the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine or the cofactor copper, affect plumage development (melanin synthesis) and immune response (see Poston et al. 2005)?

  • Do minerals in the diet, such as calcium, influence aspects of bib development and immune response?