RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Constant companions: Wild zebra finch pairs display extreme spatial cohesion
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2024.03.21.586046
DO 10.1101/2024.03.21.586046
A1 Tyson, Chris
A1 Loning, Hugo
A1 Griffith, Simon C.
A1 Naguib, Marc
YR 2024
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/09/03/2024.03.21.586046.abstract
AB Many animals maintain long-term monogamous partnerships, but the extent to which partners associate varies substantially and has implications for the scope of cooperation between pair members. Zebra finches (Taeniopygia castanosis) are monogamously paired for life and maintain continuous partnerships, raising questions as to if and how they maintain pair cohesion despite being nonterritorial and having only short-range acoustic signals. While zebra finches are the best studied songbird in captivity, their social and spatial behaviour in the wild is poorly understood. Determining pair cohesion in songbirds to date has almost exclusively been studied at specific locations where pairs would be expected to meet, such as nesting or feeding sites, without quantifying broader movements. Here, we used solar-powered automated tracking to simultaneously monitor the movements of radio-tagged zebra finch pairs during periods with breeding activity. We reveal extremely high spatial cohesion with pairs using nearly identical home ranges and maintaining close spatial proximity across large areas. This characterisation of extremely high spatio-temporal coordination of zebra finch pairs provides important insights into the operation and benefits of monogamous relationships in highly mobile taxa, such as birds.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.