Great White and Dalmatian Pelicans: materials for breeding in captivity (Moscow Zoo) and biology in nature (Manych Lake)
Source: Problems of Zooculture and Ecology, vol. 3. Moscow Zoo / EARAZA, 2019, pp. 14–31.
Abstract
Great white and Dalmatian pelicans are rare species in nature, but common objects in zoos. At the same time, in the Moscow Zoo, where both of these species have been kept since its foundation in 1864, it was possible to reproduce them only in 2012. Currently, birds independently breed offspring. The success of nesting, although comparable with that in nature, is not high, since reproduction occurs in a specially adapted winter room, which turned out to be more attractive for nesting, but does not provide the expected level of success. The way out, it seems to us, is in modeling a natural colony in a summer aviary. Observations in the wild on Manych Lake received information on the characteristics of the reproductive and other types of behavior of these two species of pelicans nesting here, necessary to solve this problem.
Keywords: pelicans, rare species, zoos, reproductive behavior, captive breeding
Full text
The full text of this paper is published in Russian. The abstract above is the author's own English abstract from the published paper. Read it on the Russian page or in the PDF.