Life history variation between two Eurasian tree sparrow Passer montanus populations at different altitudes

Abstract

Altitudinal gradients create environmental variation that can strongly affect avian life history strategies. To fully understand this issue, a comparison of the demography of populations of the same species over large altitudinal differences is required. Here, we investigated the breeding ecology of two populations of Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus), one in the temperate zone of central China at an altitude of 30 m and another in the alpine zone of the northeastern Tibetan plateau at an altitude of 3430 m. The breeding ecology of this species was rarely studied at such a high altitude before. Our result revealed that high-altitude tree sparrows started breeding later, had a shorter breeding period (80 versus 140 days), produced smaller broods (1.2 versus 2.5 chicks) and had significantly smaller clutches (4.0 versus 4.9 eggs) but larger eggs (4272 versus 3443 mm3) when compared with their low-altitude counterparts. Besides, tree sparrows at our high-altitude site had longer nestling periods (14.5 versus 13.4 days) than those at the low-altitude site. High-altitude tree sparrows tend to have reduced fecundity but allocate more energy into each offspring to confront the stressful conditions at high altitudes. The observed patterns are consistent with adaptive life history strategies.