Article ID: | iaor20002139 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 57 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 365 |
End Page Number: | 369 |
Publication Date: | Feb 1999 |
Journal: | Animal Behaviour |
Authors: | Thomas Robert J. |
Keywords: | programming: dynamic |
A stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) model offers a general explanation of daily singing routines in birds, but remains almost untested empirically. I examined a central prediction of the SDP model, that a more variable food supply decreases the bird's song output at dawn, relative to its song output at dusk. I provided supplementary food to make the food supply more or less variable over 2-week periods in the territories of free-living European robins,