Abstract
Reproductive success has been the target of many field studies of birds, because it is supposed to relate closely to fitness. Nest-predation has been since a long time recognized as a major determinant of reproductive success in passerine birds (e.g. Nice 1957, Ricklefs 1969). However, until quite recently, infestation by parasites has generally been neglected as a selective agent affecting fitness components in birds. One major reason for this neglect may be the fact that a large fraction of generalizations on passerine reproduction originate from nest-box studies, where effects of ecto-parasites have been minimized efficiently by field workers removing old parasite-infested nests (Møller 1989). Some effects of parasites may also have gone undetected because nest losses due to parasitism were mis-classified as being due to nest-predation or starvation.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Møller, A.P., Allander, K., Dufva, R. (1990). Fitness Effects of Parasites on Passerine Birds: A Review. In: Blondel, J., Gosler, A., Lebreton, JD., McCleery, R. (eds) Population Biology of Passerine Birds. NATO ASI Series, vol 24. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75110-3_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75110-3_23
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