About the Research

Fairywrens are well known for their brilliantly-coloured plumages, cooperative breeding, complex social structures, and surprisingly high rates of infidelity. All fairywrens begin their lives in dull brown or light blue, female-like plumages, with males of each species ultimately transforming into bright and dazzling dark blue, purple, red, and black plumages once the breeding season rolls around. For males of some fairywren species, this brightly-coloured breeding (or “nuptial”) plumage may not develop in their first, second, or even their third breeding season—a phenomenon known to biologists as delayed plumage maturation. Male White-winged Fairywrens, who are arguably one of the most dramatically-coloured of the Australian fairywrens, don’t moult into breeding plumages until they are 3 or 4 years old.

As all birders know, Australia is ecologically diverse, with habitats ranging from the arid interior to the lush forests along many of the coastlines. Most species of fairywrens occupy extensive ranges, and many of the species’ ranges encompass dramatic environmental variation. Local ecological variation may help explain differences in delayed plumage maturation found within and across species. Different habitats may also influence variation in social group structure and size, by changing the costs and benefits to young birds staying in the social group they were born into (their natal group) or establishing themselves as breeding individuals defending their own territory–which may further impact onset of breeding plumage. Studying different species across different environments can give us insight into how these species have evolved to be what they are today and how they might change as their environments change around them.

Below you’ll find a list of the major questions we’re trying to answer through the Fairywren Project. We’ve broken these questions up into two sections: Core Fairywren Project Questions and Birder-generated Questions. Core Fairywren Project Questions are the questions we built the project to answer with help from birders across Australia, and Birder-generated Questions are a selection of questions from project participants that we are helping to answer.

 

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Core Fairywren Project Questions

1. How do environmental conditions influence timing of molt into nuptial plumage for each fairywren species? (see basic participation)
2. How do environmental conditions influence the size and composition of cooperative groups for each fairywren species? (see advanced participation)
3. How do the relationships we observe between environment, timing of molt, size of groups, and composition of groups within each species help us explain previously-reported variation in extra-pair paternity, helping, and dispersal across the fairywren species?

We hypothesize that environmental conditions such as rainfall, vegetation density, and insect abundance influence when males obtain bright plumage and therefore the number of males in bright plumage, which may further impact the social behaviour of the birds.

 

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Participant-generated Questions

1. Do fairywrens ever migrate?

Story behind the question: currently, all species of fairywrens are reported to be year-round residents and never migratory. But a Fairywren Project participant wrote to us with an observation that Superb Fairywrens may migrate altitudinally in the mountains of Victoria. Now we’re working with that user to see if we can use eBird data to study whether altitudinal migration exists in Superb Fairywrens.

Have an idea or question? Let us know at fairywrenproject@gmail.com and we might add it to the list!

 

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How we answer our questions

To answer our core questions, we will combine your observations with observations of environmental conditions such as rainfall and vegetation which are available from the Australian government and other monitoring organizations. This will allow us to illuminate patterns of variation in breeding plumage, timing of moult, and social group organization across Australia’s variable environment.

We hope to continue this study for a number of years to maximize our power in comparing how different environmental conditions in the same locations lead to year-to-year differences.

Go here to participate.

 

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How we’ll share our results

We plan to share our results through scientific papers, and popular press articles, including periodical newsletters we post on our news page  and send out to our followers via our email list. Sign up here to receive the Fairywren Project email list.

 

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Research papers

Welklin, J.F., Johnson, A.E., Black, A., Nye, G., Sramek, P., Michalek, B., Ross, M., Newport, A., Walker, D., Welburn, T. and Busch, H., 2022. New records of hybridisation in Australian Fairy-wrens' Malurus' spp. Australian Field Ornithology, 39, pp.63-75. Read it here.

Johnson, A. E., Welklin, J. F., Hoppe, I. R., & Shizuka, D. (2023). Ecogeography of group size suggests differences in drivers of sociality among cooperatively breeding fairywrens. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 290(1995), 20222397. Read it here.

 

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