Publication Date:
1999-10-03
Description:
Good-genes hypotheses of sexual selection predict that offspring fathered by preferred males should have increased viability resulting from superior genetic quality. Several studies of birds have reported findings consistent with this prediction, but maternal effects are an important confounding variable. Those studies that have attempted to control for maternal effects have only considered differential maternal investment after egg laying. However, female birds differentially deposit testosterone in the eggs, and this influences the development of the chick. This study shows that female birds deposit higher amounts of testosterone and 5alpha-dihydrotestosterone in their eggs when mated to more attractive males.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Gil, D -- Graves, J -- Hazon, N -- Wells, A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1999 Oct 1;286(5437):126-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉School of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9TS, UK. Diego.Gil@u-paris10.fr〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10506561" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Dihydrotestosterone/metabolism
;
Egg Yolk/metabolism
;
Female
;
Male
;
Oviposition
;
Ovum/*metabolism
;
Random Allocation
;
*Sexual Behavior, Animal
;
Songbirds/genetics/*physiology
;
Testosterone/*metabolism
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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