Publication Date:
2002-01-12
Description:
Most species of birds can lay only one egg per day until a clutch is complete, and the order in which eggs are laid often has strong and sex-specific effects on offspring growth and survival. In two recently established populations of the house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) in Montana and Alabama, breeding females simultaneously adjusted the sex and growth of offspring in relation to their position in the laying order, thereby reducing the mortality of sons and daughters by 10 to 20% in both environments. We show experimentally that the reduction in mortality is produced by persistent and sex-specific maternal effects on the growth and morphology of offspring. These strong parental effects may have facilitated the rapid adaptive divergence among populations of house finches.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Badyaev, Alexander V -- Hill, Geoffrey E -- Beck, Michelle L -- Dervan, Anne A -- Duckworth, Renee A -- McGraw, Kevin J -- Nolan, Paul M -- Whittingham, Linda A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2002 Jan 11;295(5553):316-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA. abadyaev@selway.umt.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11786641" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Adaptation, Physiological
;
Alabama
;
Animals
;
Behavior, Animal
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Body Weight
;
Ecosystem
;
Environment
;
Female
;
Male
;
Montana
;
Oviposition
;
*Reproduction
;
Selection, Genetic
;
*Sex Characteristics
;
Sex Ratio
;
Songbirds/anatomy & histology/growth & development/*physiology
;
Tarsus, Animal/anatomy & histology/growth & development
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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