Mike Wells says he makes birds fight for a living. He became interested in the social behavior of animals after taking a course in college on primates and another on behavioral ecology. In an interview he said, "You see spectacular forms of cooperation in many populations of animals" - (i.e. army ants). He is now studying the cooperative breeding behavior of a Costa Rican bird species where there is a dominant pair that breeds while the rest of the 4-12 member family does not. They stick around sleeping together in a dormitory nests and helping to support the offspring by foraging for food and defending their territory.
This type of indirect reproduction is fairly common in nature - it is mostly seen in the Hymnoptera (wasps, ants, and bees). It's called kin selection and it refers to strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at the cost of the organism's own survival and/or reproduction. Fascinating research! This behavior is less common in other animal groups but Mike is interested in how and why this type of kin selection evolved to varying degrees in different wren species of the Campylohynchus genus.
Jen and I woke up at 5am to meet him and his assistant as they attempted to net and band one of these wrens in a local family but he had no luck. He thinks they were on to him. In the video you might be able to tell that he's using a recording device to play a distress call then you hear the family make their own distress call, back and forth. So he's stressing them out, getting them in fight mode so they'll fly toward him and get caught in his net. By banding one of their legs they are easier to track and study. He did manage to net a Golden-hooded Tanager, one of the prettiest birds I've seen here :) After a little wrestling with the net and wings it was set free.
And he showed us a Montezuma's Oropendula nest that had been accidently dismantled as one of the owners was attacking an intruder. Only one egg inside :(
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