Why do hoarding birds gain fat in winter in the wrong way?
In winter, small birds should be fat to avoid starvation and lean and agile to escape predators. This means that they face a trade-off between the costs and benefits of carrying fat reserves. Every day they must gain enough fat to survive the coming night. Food-hoarding species can afford to carry less fat than nonhoarders because they can store energy outside the body. Furthermore, hoarders should avoid carrying excessive fat during the day because they can gain fat fast by retrieving food late in the afternoon. With no stored supplies, nonhoarders face more unpredictable access to food, and they should start gaining fat earlier in the day. The predicted pattern is then that nonhoarders gain fat early and that hoarders gain fat late in the day. Recent field data show the opposite pattern: hoarders gain relatively more fat reserves in the morning than nonhoarders do. Using a dynamic model that mimics the conditions in a boreal winter forest, I investigated under which conditions this p
