Mallards are well adapted to urban environments and utilize habitats available within cities for key stages of their annual cycle, including wintering and breeding. Preliminary study has shown that within the city, females tend to select waterbodies in more heavily urbanized areas for rearing their chicks. Interestingly, unlike many other bird species, structural urbanization does not affect Mallard chick survival negatively. At the same time, the benefits that the brooding female might gain from choosing more urbanized habitats remain unclear.
This project focuses on the Mallard breeding period, during which we would like to investigate the behavior and time budgets of Mallard families (both females and their ducklings) in relation to urbanization gradient and development stage of the chicks. Specifically, we aim to examine the effect of human activity pressure and birds’ behavioral responses to disturbance and supplementary feeding. The main objective is to explore the link between the ethology of Mallard families and the chicks’ survival and/or female breeding success. This will help to clarify this species’ adaptations to life in cities and shed light on the evolutionary mechanism underlying synurbization of birds.
Conducting fieldwork (finding Mallard families, performing behavioural experiments, filming birds’ behaviour); Processing of the video recordings; Data processing and statistical analyses; Participating in scientific discussion.
Experience in collecting data in the field on wild animal behaviour; Processing video recordings and creating ethograms; Processing and analysing obtained data using R; Critical thinking; Reading scientific literature.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
