THE ROLE OF FOOD QUANTITY AND PREY TYPE IN NESTLING DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN KESTRELS

Diet is an important component of life history that can vary with, and ultimately determine, individual variation in phenotypically plastic traits. American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) generally have low post-fledging survival rates, which suggests a need to better understand what ecological factors, such as diet, influence nestling maturity. The generalist diet of kestrels makes it unlikely that all nestlings in a population receive the same diet. We investigated how breeding phenology and nestling sex ratio interact with diet metrics (diet diversity, percentage of prey types, rate of prey biomass delivery) and relate to nestling maturity (mass, tarsus length, wing length, hematocrit, hemoglobin concentration). We hypothesized that: (1) phenology and nestling sex ratio would correlate with inter-nest diet variation; (2) diet metrics would be predictive of nestling development; and (3) the manipulation of food quantity through food supplementation would lead to nestlings with greater developmental maturity. We found that inter-nest variation in diet was correlated with breeding phenology and nestling sex ratio, independently. However, the variation in diet was unrelated to nestling maturity. In response to food supplementation, kestrel parents decreased their food-provisioning rate, indicating that food quantity regulates parental care. Male nestlings appeared to benefit from supplementation while females did not. Our data demonstrated high inter-brood variation in nestling diet, and suggested that diet variation interacts with sex to influence growth and development of nestlings, which could potentially be linked to population decline.