Survival benefits of post-fledging care: experimental approach to a critical part of avian reproductive strategies

Summary 1. Caring for offspring beyond leaving the nest is an important but under‐studied part of avian life histories. Theory predicts that prolonged post‐fledging parental care should yield fitness benefits such as increased fledgling survival. Post‐fledging care is also costly in terms of time and energy available for subsequent reproduction, moult or migration. So far, direct measurements of the fitness effects of the duration of...