Fire and the Florida Scrub-Jay: An Investigation of Fire Suppression's Effect on Provisioning Inequality in Aphelocoma coerulescens

Abstract

The Florida Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens) lives on a small area of land in central Florida and is dependent on the scrub, a fire-maintained system. It is currently listed as a federally threatened species due to habitat loss and degradation caused by land conversion and anthropogenic fire suppression. Theory surrounding the concept of trade-offs states that an organism’s limited reserve of energy requires it to invest in some life history activities at the cost of taking investment away from others. Studies have shown that some trade-offs, such as one between foraging and scanning for predators, become more apparent as the Florida scrub undergoes longer periods of fire suppression. After Florida scrub has undergone fire suppression for more than ten years, it is considered low-quality from the Florida Scrub-Jay’s perspective. This thesis investigates fire suppression’s effect on measurements of fledgling provisioning inequality to determine if fire suppression has an impact on trade-offs between fledgling provisioning and other aspects of life history. Furthermore, measurements of fledgling provisioning inequality are investigated to determine if provisioning inequality could affect the ultimate fitness of resulting offspring. This study shows that the percent of low-quality land has a negative effect on the territory and per capita feeding rates; the percent of low-quality land has no effect on measurements of feeding rate inequality when unidentified feedings are considered. Measurements of feeding rate inequality can affect measurements of inequality of body mass at 85 days old. This research contributes to the current body of literature on brood division in the Florida Scrub-Jay compared to other cooperative breeding birds. Understanding how territory quality affects future generations of Florida Scrub-Jay via measurements taken in this study will allow for more informed and efficient conservation decisions to be made.