Sex-Biased Hatching Order and Adaptive Population Divergence
BibTeX
@MISC{Bird_sex-biasedhatching,
author = {In A Passerine Bird and Er V. Badyaev and Geoffrey E. Hill and Michelle L. Beck and Anne A. Dervan and Renée A. Duckworth and Kevin J. Mcgraw and Paul M. Nolan and Linda A. Whittingham},
title = {Sex-Biased Hatching Order and Adaptive Population Divergence},
year = {}
}
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Abstract
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. Most species of birds lay one egg per day until a clutch is complete, and eggs hatch in approximately the order in which they are laid. Parents may modify the often strong effects of hatching
