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Feeding ecology of the Stone marten (Martes foina) in Europe.
Nováková, Lucie ; Vohralík, Vladimír (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
During last decades, the stone marten, Martes foina (Erxleben, 1777) became a synanthropic animal and its population is increasing. This review is summarizing the knowledge about its feeding habits throughout Europe. In the first part the methods are introduced which are used for study of feeding ecology, for example scat analysis or the analysis of stomach and gut content. The way of calculations of some characteristic values most frequently used in study of feeding ecology of marten are described. In the second part the geographic variability and the seasonal changes in the marten's food in the different parts of Europe are analyzed. It seems that the type of habitat, in which the stone marten lives, affects its feeding habits. The differences its feeding in the urban and rural habitats are shown. There are intrahabitat differences too. In the third part of this work the main components of marten's food are described which include various small vertebrates, invertebrates (mostly insects) and fruit, and some marten's food specifics are discussed. Food resources provided by man are mentioned. Key words: feeding ecology, stone marten, Mustelidae
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Breeding site fidelity in waterfowl
Kejzlarová, Tereza ; Musil, Petr (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
The thesis is concerned in breeding site fidelity and focused on Anseriformes, especially Anatidae. Higher fidelity ratio in females than in males is an interesting pattern of breeding site fidelity in this bird group. On the contrary, an opposite pattern, i. e. higher fidelity ratio in males prevailed among other bird species. This study is aimed at describing this phenomenon and discussion of factors affecting fidelity ratio. Among, the most important factors, the importance of the previous breeding success and environmental conditions is underlined. The study includes data about fidelity ratio from 40 studies of breeding site fidelity in Anatidae.
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Sunbird foraging behaviour on flowers of Impatiens sakeriana
Sejfová, Zuzana ; Janeček, Štěpán (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
Although the Old World sunbirds are generally considered to be an ecological analogy of the New World hummingbirds, until recently it was believed that in contrast to hummingbirds, sunbirds perch while feeding. This opinion was largely supported by several studies, mostly from South Africa, describing adaptations of plants facilitating this behaviour. However, recent studies have shown that the Old World nectarivores hover while feeding in front of flowers more frequently than previously thought. We focused on a specialised West African pollination system of Impatiens sakeriana and the foraging behaviour of its two major pollinators, the Northern Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris reichenowi) and the Cameroon Sunbird (Cyanomitra oritis). Based on continuous monitoring in their natural habitat via camera systems, we evaluated factors influencing bird foraging behaviour on a flower, i.e. bird's decision whether to perch or to hover. Our results indicate that sunbird foraging behaviour choice depends on plant architecture, namely on the length of peduncles and pedicels. Surprisingly, weather affects pollinator's behaviour just slightly. The data also indicate that feeding and moving among flowers require less time if the bird hovers and therefore this behaviour is associated with higher flower...
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The role of individual traits in the Northern Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) females on breeding performance, mating status and male incubation effort
Sládeček, Martin ; Šálek, Miroslav (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
Feather ornaments and its role as a signals in sexual selection has been broadly studied topic in avian biology. However, vast majority of studies focus especially on role of male ornamentation and female preferences in sexual selection. Despite this fact, recent work shows, that similar palette of adaptive functions can be found for female feather ornaments, and male preferences for them, respectively. This study focuses on possible importance of female melanin-based ornaments and other individual on breeding performance in the Northern Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), common polygynous wader breeding in agricultural landscape. No significant predictor of female investment to egg size was found. Long winged females with bigger proportion of secondaries changed during prenuptial moulting and bigger extent of melanin ornaments tended, surprisingly, to later timing of breeding. Contrary to this trend, extent of female ornamentation seems to be sexually selected trait by males. Analysis of male incubation behavior shows, that males incubate more in nests of more ornamented females, as well as in nests in later incubation stage. These findings seems to be in a good agreement with "Differential allocation hypothesis". On the other site, no effect of clutch egg sizes and timing of breeding was found....
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Ecology and behaviour of two European pipit species
Petrusková, Tereza ; Fuchs, Roman (advisor) ; Procházka, Petr (referee) ; Matyjasiak, Piotr (referee)
Brief overview of the thesis The thesis consists of íntroductionand five chapters (four published articles and one unpublished manuscript), which deal with two topics unified by the studied species. The first part of the thesis focuses on mechanisms allowing coexistence of tree and meadow pipits, and on the territorial and aggressive behaviour of meadow pipit males. The second part of the thesis analyzes tree pipit song and singing behaviour. Short introduction to the first part presentsbríefbackground on mechanisms allowing coexistence of closely related territorial bird species, and first two chapters focus on local co- occunence of ecologically and morphologically very similar congeneric species: the tree pipit (Anthus trivialis) and the meadow pipít(A. praten'sis).First, we evaluate habitat preferences of these species in syntopy and on two allopatric localities, and show that both species select different habitats in coexistence. ln the next chapter,we test by playback experiments for the presence ofinterspecific territoriality, and conclude that habitat preferences,and not interspecific aggression, are important for territorial selection of the two studied species. In addition, we demonstratethat overexcitation by conspecific song is a factor strongiy influencing behaviour of testedanimals, and...
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The role of the face and the body size in predators' recognition by untrained birds
Fišer, Ondřej ; Fuchs, Roman (advisor) ; Petrusková, Tereza (referee)
The face plays an extremely important role in human communication. It enables individual recognition and provides other information about the person, such as social or emotional information. Human psychology has shown that face recognition uses a specific cognitive process called holistic processing. In recent decades, it has been shown to play an important role in animal communication as well. In the first part of my thesis, I tested whether changing the uniform configuration of a bird's face would affect the ability of the red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) to recognize a potential predator. Due to unfavourable conditions in both breeding seasons when the experiments were conducted, no firm conclusions can be drawn from the results. They only suggest that the shrike perceives the configuration changes. An essential characteristic of all predators is their size, which affects the ability of prey to defend themselves. Several studies have already found that birds discriminate between different predators of different sizes. In the second part of my thesis, I evaluated experiments in which shrikes were exposed to dummies of two predator species with modified size. The shrikes responded with less aggression to the enlarged jays, whereas aggression increased only slightly to the shrunken crows. Thus,...
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