Why don't birds lay more eggs?
Fifty years ago David Lack put forward a key hypothesis in life-history theory: that avian clutch is ultimately determined by the number of young that parents can provide with food. Since then, a plethora of brood manipulations has shown that birds can rear more young than the number of eggs they lay, and prompted a search for negative effects of increased effort on future reproduction. However, recent studies have shown that the demands of laying and incubating eggs generally omitted from experiments, could affect parental fitness. Lack's hypothesis, and the tests of its validity, need to be extended to encompass the full demands of producing and rearing the brood.
Applied Ornithology Unit, Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK G12 8QQ.
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