Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Splendid Fairy-wrens: demonstrating the importance of longevity
- 2 Green Woodhoopoes: life history traits and sociality
- 3 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: a ‘primitive’ cooperative breeder
- 4 Arabian Babblers: the quest for social status in a cooperative breeder
- 5 Hoatzins: cooperative breeding in a folivorous neotropical bird
- 6 Campylorhynchus wrens: the ecology of delayed dispersal and cooperation in the Venezuelan savanna
- 7 Pinyon Jays: making the best of a bad situation by helping
- 8 Florida Scrub Jays: a synopsis after 18 years of study
- 9 Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
- 10 Galápagos mockingbirds: territorial cooperative breeding in a climatically variable environment
- 11 Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
- 12 Galápagos and Harris' Hawks: divergent causes of sociality in two raptors
- 13 Pukeko: different approaches and some different answers
- 14 Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
- 15 Dunnocks: cooperation and conflict among males and females in a variable mating system
- 16 White-fronted Bee-eaters: helping in a colonially nesting species
- 17 Pied Kingfishers: ecological causes and reproductive consequences of cooperative breeding
- 18 Noisy Miners: variations on the theme of communality
- Summary
- Index
9 - Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Splendid Fairy-wrens: demonstrating the importance of longevity
- 2 Green Woodhoopoes: life history traits and sociality
- 3 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: a ‘primitive’ cooperative breeder
- 4 Arabian Babblers: the quest for social status in a cooperative breeder
- 5 Hoatzins: cooperative breeding in a folivorous neotropical bird
- 6 Campylorhynchus wrens: the ecology of delayed dispersal and cooperation in the Venezuelan savanna
- 7 Pinyon Jays: making the best of a bad situation by helping
- 8 Florida Scrub Jays: a synopsis after 18 years of study
- 9 Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
- 10 Galápagos mockingbirds: territorial cooperative breeding in a climatically variable environment
- 11 Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
- 12 Galápagos and Harris' Hawks: divergent causes of sociality in two raptors
- 13 Pukeko: different approaches and some different answers
- 14 Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
- 15 Dunnocks: cooperation and conflict among males and females in a variable mating system
- 16 White-fronted Bee-eaters: helping in a colonially nesting species
- 17 Pied Kingfishers: ecological causes and reproductive consequences of cooperative breeding
- 18 Noisy Miners: variations on the theme of communality
- Summary
- Index
Summary
Studies of unhanded Mexican Jays (Aphelocoma ultramarina), which began with Gross (1949), Wagner (1955) and Hardy (1961), reported the presence of more than two birds around nests and hinted at cooperation. The first intensive study based on color-banding of entire flocks, however, revealed mainly uncooperative rivalry (Brown 1963a). Here, we summarize published knowledge of the behavioral ecology of this species and discuss the apparent contradiction of the presence in the same social units and even the same individuals of both cooperative and uncooperative behavior. A more detailed report covering 20 years of data is currently in preparation.
Habitats and study areas
We have studied Mexican Jays at three principal localities in the United States and a variety of places in Mexico. We began our work in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona in 1958. For our long-term study beginning in 1969, however, we chose a base at the Southwestern Research Station of the American Museum of Natural History in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona, working with A. u. arizonae. To gain information about other subspecies we have made brief studies in the Chisos Mountains of Texas and in the Sierra Madre of Mexico. Thus, most of our work has been done on A. u. arizonae, but we have some field data on nearly all the other subspecies.
Mexican Jays throughout their range are typically associated with temperate-zone oaks (Quercus spp.) and mountains.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cooperative Breeding in BirdsLong Term Studies of Ecology and Behaviour, pp. 267 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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