Higher Nest Predation Favors Rapid Fledging at the Cost of Plumage Quality in Nestling Birds

AbstractHigh predation risk can favor rapid offspring development at the expense of offspring quality. Impacts of rapid development on phenotypic quality should be most readily expressed in traits that minimize fitness costs. We hypothesize that ephemeral traits that are replaced or repaired after a short period of life might express trade-offs in quality as a result of rapid development more strongly than traits used throughout life. We explored this idea for plumage quality in nestling body feathers, an ephemeral trait. We found a strong trade-off whereby nestlings that spend less time in the nest produced lower-quality plumage with less dense barbs relative to adults across 123 temperate and tropical species. For a subset of these species (n=67), we found that variation in the risk of nest predation explained additional variation in plumage quality beyond development time. Ultimately, the fitness costs of a poor-quality ephemeral trait, such as nestling body feathers, may be outweighed by the fitness b...