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Kentish Plover Incubation Shifts Varied With Seasonal Warming and Predation Risk

Kentish plover standing on a tidal mudflat in Tangshan, China.
Research · Behaviour

Female Kentish plovers (Anarhynchus alexandrinus) did most of the daytime incubation at 45 nests in northern Bohai Bay, China, while males took the night shift. Minute-by-minute monitoring produced 13,632 nest-hours of data and allowed the researchers to examine how temperature, the progress of the breeding season and local predation risk were related to the division of parental care.

Females incubated more than males over the full day. As the season progressed and temperatures rose, males spent more time on the nest around midday but started their night shift later, while females reduced their attendance. The division of incubation became more even, although the males’ total daily attendance did not increase.

Rocky nesting habitat was associated with greater predation risk at night. There, males shifted more of their incubation from night to day and accumulated more daily attendance than females. Greater male daytime involvement was also associated with more frequent changeovers between the parents.

Sources and image credit

  1. Huang, C., Que, P., Xu, N., Yuan, S., & Zhang, Z. (2026). Hourly analyses reveal environment-linked between-parent dynamics in a biparentally incubating shorebird. Avian Research, 17(2), 100356. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avrs.2026.100356Published online 3 March 2026. Minute-resolution monitoring of 45 Kentish plover nests in northern Bohai Bay, China, yielded 13,632 nest-hours of incubation data.

Image: zinogre / iNaturalist, via Wikimedia Commons. Kentish plover in Caofeidian, Tangshan, China, 16 May 2021. Representative species photograph, not a documented study bird. Cropped to 16:9. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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