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Incubation of eggs is an important part of reproduction in birds, but its significance often has been overlooked.  Optimal growth of developing embryos takes place within a narrow range of incubation temperatures, and parents must balance the demands of maintaining their own body condition with that of caring for developing eggs.  So the incubation period is an important time for both parents and future offspring. 

Time and energy demands during incubation can be especially important in species, like wood ducks, where only one sex incubates.  In wood ducks, only females incubate the eggs.  They spend about 85% of the day on the nest and leave the nest two times each day to feed.  While away from the nest, egg temperatures may fall below that needed for optimal development which can lead to longer incubation periods.  Why is this a concern?  Well, lengthy incubation periods increase the risk of egg predation and nest failure and potentially influence the amount of energy used by developing embryos that may cause changes to the size and quality of ducklings. 

Research will focus on three main areas.  First, in an earlier study I discovered that wood duck eggs incubated at low temperatures took longer to hatch and produced ducklings that used more fat and protein during development.  In a large-scale field experiment, I now will use incubation temperature to manipulate phenotypes of wood duck ducklings and examine effects of these temperature-induced changes to duckling quality on growth and development, survival, recruitment to the breeding population, and subsequent reproductive success.  Second, my collaborator at Virginia Tech University, Bill Hopkins, will estimate effects of incubation temperature on metabolic rates and total energy expended by wood duck embryos.  Later, he will examine the ability of ducklings that were incubated at different temperatures to thermoregulate, and estimate the energetic costs of thermoregulation. Lastly, I will manipulate incubation costs of adult wood ducks and examine the effects of these manipulated costs on body mass dynamics, incubation behavior, reproductive performance, and survival. 

Results from this interdisciplinary research should re-invigorate studies of incubation patterns and their functional consequences in birds.  Moreover, a better understanding of the basic reproductive ecology of wood ducks will help in the conservation and management of this important species.

Integration of research and education will be an important goal of the project.  This will be accomplished by (1) incorporating results of the research in our teaching programs, (2) recruiting undergraduate and graduate students to work as assistants on the project, (3) hosting a workshop for undergraduate students that will demonstrate research and data management methods, and (4) integrating a K-12 activity on waterfowl reproduction, conservation and education with the Virginia Tech’s Science Outreach Program (SOuP) which brings science research to broader audiences, especially K-12 teachers and students.