Making the best of a bad job? Chick mortality and flexible female brood care in Snowy Plovers

Offspring desertion represents a trade-off between current and future reproductive success. Its timing is crucial as the termination of parental care has profound consequences for the fitness of the parents and their offspring. However, the decision process involved with termination of care is still poorly understood. Snowy Plovers Charadrius nivosus show highly flexible brood care with females either deserting the brood early or providing care for an extended period. Deserting females often quickly remate and start a new breeding attempt. Using a dynamic modelling framework, we investigated the decision-making process for continuation or termination of care by females over a seven-year period. The length of female care increased over the season likely reflecting lower re-mating opportunities for deserting females late in the season. Present brood size, assessed daily during the brood care period, was strongly related to the length of female care: females were more likely to stay and care for larger than for smaller broods. Chick death and desertion frequently coincided, suggesting that poor offspring condition served as a trigger for female desertion. Overall, deserting females had a similar number of fledglings to caring females. This suggests that for many females, desertion was not a strategy to escape the shackles of monogamy and secure higher reproductive success through sequential polygamy. Rather, most deserting females made the best of a bad job when conditions were poor and their continued presence did not make a difference for the survival of their young. We conclude that when making the decision to continue or terminate care, Snowy Plover females monitor the condition of their offspring closely and adjust their care flexibly to the value and needs of their young.