COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS OF TIME SPENT GROOMING BY BIRDS IN RELATION TO PARASITE LOAD

Although grooming and other kinds of maintenance activity are importan t components of the behavioural repertoire of terrestrial vertebrates, comparative studies of the proportion of time budgets devoted to main tenance are lacking. Data were collated on the proportion of their tim e-budgets devoted to maintenance behaviour by 62 different bird specie s. On average, birds spend 9.2% of the day in maintenance activities, with the major component (92.6%) being grooming. Male birds devoted mo re time to maintenance than females, except in the case of ducks. Main tenance time does not appear to correlate with morphology, moult, lati tude, coloniality or season. However, bird species known to harbour mo re parasitic louse species spend more time on maintenance than do host species with few lice.