| Abstract: | Bird reproductive performance often increases with age or experience as a result of improved foraging skills, increased reproductive effort, improved coordination between partners, or a selection process. However, it remains unclear whether age and/or experience affect equally the successive steps of the breeding process, from egg laying to incubation and chick rearing. Using data from a long‐term study of the Camargue (southern France) population of the greater flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus, we studied the influence of age on step‐specific breeding performances during a single breeding season. We used, for the first time, multistate recapture models to evaluate the effect of age on breeding attendance (as a surrogate for breeding success) during incubation, early chick rearing and late chick rearing. Our results show a significant positive influence of age on breeding attendance, but only during the incubation period. Older parents had a higher probability than younger ones of completing incubation, whereas after the chick had hatched, the influence of parental age on breeding attendance was no longer significant. Although a high rate of nest desertion by younger flamingos during the middle of the incubation period coincided with a period of heavy rainfall, including rainfall level as a covariate did not improve the fit of the models. We discuss our results in relation to the evolution of life‐history strategies in long‐lived bird species and the influence of environmental instability. |
