Date of Award
4-5-2021
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
Mathematics
First Advisor
Shandelle Henson
Abstract
During years of high sea surface temperature, food resources for glaucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) are scarce. In response, male gulls cannibalize the eggs of neighbors. When this occurs, female gulls in dense areas of the colony adopt a tactic of egg-laying synchrony, in which they lay eggs synchronously on an every- other-day schedule. Field observations show that the first laid egg of each clutch is the most likely to be cannibalized. In this paper, we analyzed a discrete-time model of egg-laying behavior that tracks egg order in the nest. Using Jury Conditions, we found that the equilibrium destabilizes into a two-cycle as colony density increases through a critical value, and that the two-cycle becomes increasingly synchronous as density increases further. We demonstrated that synchronous colonies produce more eggs than non-synchronous colonies in the presence of egg cannibalism.
Recommended Citation
Nurhan, Yosia, "A Note on Cannibalism and Synchrony in Seabird Egg-Laying Behavior" (2021). Honors Theses. 244.
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/244/
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/244
Subject Area
Cannibalism in animals; Eggs as food; Glaucous-winged gull--Cannibalism; Glaucous-winged gull--Eggs; Ovulation
Presentation Record URL
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors-undergraduate-poster-symposium/2021/symposium/23/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/244/