Sex and the city: Effects of individual condition and habitat urbanization on mountain chickadee reproductive behaviour

Variation in individual condition and habitat quality influence reproductive tactics in many songbird species. The goal of this thesis was to gain insight into the reproductive tactics utilized by mountain chickadees. Specifically, I asked how individual condition and habitat urbanization influence a female's likelihood to engage in extra-pair copulations or produce a sex-biased brood. Over three breeding seasons, I monitored mountain chickadees nests in urban and rural habitat, and determined nestling sex and paternity using genetic techniques. I found extra-pair paternity is common in the mountain chickadee and can be attributed to the good genes hypothesis. I also found tenuous evidence to suggest sex allocation occurs in this species in response to habitat urbanization. However, in general, habitat urbanization had little effect on mountain chickadee reproductive tactics, suggesting the relative quality of urban vs. rural habitat is a complex dynamic and further characterization of this system is necessary.