Breeding biology of an endemic Bornean turdid, the Fruithunter (Chlamydochaera jefferyi), and life history comparisons with Turdus species of the world

We present the first description of the breeding biology for the Fruithunter (Chlamydochaera jefferyi), a member of the cosmopolitan family Turdidae, and a montane endemic to the tropical Asian island of Borneo. We also compile breeding biology traits from the literature to make comparisons between the Fruithunter and the thrush genus Turdus. Our comparisons indicate that Fruithunters exhibit a slower life history strategy than both tropical and north temperate Turdus. We located and monitored 42 nests in 7 years in Kinabalu Park, Sabah, Malaysia. The mean clutch size was 1.89 +/- 0.008 eggs, and the modal clutch size was 2 eggs. Mean' fresh egg mass was 6.15 +/- 0.13 g, representing 9.5% of adult female body mass. Average lengths of incubation and nestling periods were 14.56 +/- 0.24 and 17.83 +/- 0.31 days respectively. Only the female incubated and brooded the eggs and nestlings, but both the male and female fed nestlings. Female attentiveness during incubation was high throughout, reaching an asymptote around 85% with average on-bouts of 39.0 +/- 2.5 mins. The daily nest survival probability was 0.951 +/- 0.025, and the daily predation rate was 0.045 +/- 0.024. Female feeding rate increased as brooding effort decreased, suggesting that female feeding rate may be constrained by the need to provide heat while nestlings are unable to thermoregulate. This contrasts with the feeding behavior of males, which showed much less of an increase across the nestling period. Furthermore, we describe a new vocalization which expands the vocal repertoire for Fruithunters, and we provide a brief audio clip and spectrogram.