Via World Science
Divorce might not be healthy—but at least it may be natural, if findings from a new study are to be believed.
The research examined what scientists call “divorce” among shorebirds of a species known as Calidris alpina, and found that females tend to fare better in the aftermath of the splitups.
Also called dunlins, these long-lived birds often mate with the same partner over several seasons, then go their separate ways, according to biologists Lars-Åke Flodin and Donald Blomqvist of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The scientists recorded 126 breeding attempts and found that 23 percent of the pairs divorced. They then compared the breeding success of males and females before and after “divorce” to explore some causes and consequences of the change. Female divorcees that found new partners doubled their nest success, the researchers found.
The improvement “appeared independent of breeding experience,” Flodin and Blomqvist wrote, reporting their findings in the research journal Behaviour. “We were unable to detect any effect of divorce on male reproductive success.”
The researchers concluded that female dunlins divorce to upgrade to a better mate or territory.
Divorcing couples weren’t found to differ from non-divorcing couples in nest success in the season preceding divorce, both in terms of total nest failure or the number of eggs in the nest. Non-divorcing pairs and male divorcees that paired with new partners had similar nest success in consecutive years.
“Social monogamy is a rare mating system among animals, occurring commonly only in birds,” the researchers noted. “In long-lived birds, pair bonds may persist for several seasons in some species, while in others mate change occurs even when both partners are still alive.”
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