While doing so, inside the eleven other nests we registered egg temperatures playing with a miniature temperatures logger (Tinytalk-temp, Orion Elements, Sussex, United kingdom)

I located 105 active nests, primarily when you’re driving much slower over the surroundings

Throughout the for each reproduction year we wanted nests intensively throughout the study web site. We used the new fate of each and every colony until the eggs hatched or even the nest hit a brick wall. Nests was basically decided to go to anywhere between 0900 and you may 1700 hours as well as the check outs endured 2 hundred yards away from the nest, ranging from 1000 and 1700 hours. Length of this new focal findings ranged of 31 minute so you’re able to eight h, as well as the full time of observance are 30.5 h. As the our very own observations ranged in total there was indeed times inside the that the male is at the fresh colony all the time, in order to estimate new portion of colony focus we pooled the newest focal observations off nests which were at the same phase away from incubation.

Since the males are more inclined to desert this new nest when disrupted during the an initial phase of your own nesting stage ( Fernandez and you will Reboreda 2000), i monitored the majority of the nests (9 of your own eleven times totaling 34 nest-days) throughout the mid- or later incubation

The thermistor of the temperature logger was introduced in a fresh natural orphan egg (unattended eggs laid far from active nests; Navarro et al. 1998) through a small hole in the equatorial plane and fixed to the eggshell with epoxy adhesive. The egg was attached to the center of the nest and the data logger was hidden under the nest. The data logger automatically recorded the temperature at 3.8 or 6 min intervals during four or six days, respectively. We monitored egg temperatures in those 11 nests totaling 40 nest-days. In the other two cases we started the monitoring of the nest three and five days after the laying of the first egg. None of the nests used for monitoring male activity was deserted. We used the decrease in egg temperature to determine when the male left the nest ( Hainsworth et al. 1998, Flint and Grand 1999). We previously estimated egg cooling-rate of Greater Rhea eggs by heating six fresh eggs up to 33°C and then placing them in an environment at a temperature of 25°C, similar to temperatures registered in our study area between 1100 and 1300 hours (the warmest time of the day). We estimated egg cooling-rate by dividing the initial difference in temperature between eggs and the environment by the time elapsed until eggs reached a thermal equilibrium with the environment. The estimated egg cooling-rate for a temperature gradient of 8°C was 0.063 ± 0.01°C min ?1 . We assumed that the male left the nest when the difference in egg temperature was |T(t) ? T(t?1)| > 1°C, where T(t) and T(t?1) are egg temperatures at a time interval of 15 min when data loggers were set at 3.8 min intervals or 18 min when they were set at 6 min intervals. We considered that the male was outside the nest since the time at which the difference between T(t) and T(t?1) was negative until the time it was positive (i.e. the male resumed incubation). Although the sun can lovingwomen.org bunu okumaya devam edin heat eggs when the male is absent (particularly at midday), unattended eggs never reached temperatures >30°C (see below). Therefore, it was possible for us to discriminate between an increase in temperature produced by the Sun and one produced by males when they resume incubation.

We together with mentioned adaptation for the eggs temperature into the three fresh nests (nests rather than male desire). We made use of nests that had been in earlier times discontinued given that fresh nests. In the for every colony (clutch versions regarding 16, 21, and you can 23 egg) we fixed one egg that have good thermistor in to the, on center of the colony in a similar way one i did to your productive nests (look for significantly more than).