Badyaev Alexander V, Hill Geoffrey E, Beck Michelle L, Dervan Anne A, Duckworth Renee A, McGraw Kevin J, Nolan Paul M, Whittingham Linda A
Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA.
Science. 2002 Jan 11;295(5553):316-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1066651.
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.
大多数鸟类物种在一窝蛋产齐之前每天只能产一枚蛋，而且产蛋顺序往往对后代的生长和存活有着强烈且特定性别的影响。在蒙大拿州和阿拉巴马州最近新形成的两个家朱雀（Carpodacus mexicanus）种群中，繁殖期的雌性会根据产蛋顺序同时调整后代的性别和生长情况，从而在这两种环境中都将儿子和女儿的死亡率降低了10%至20%。我们通过实验表明，死亡率的降低是由母体对后代生长和形态的持续且特定性别的影响造成的。这些强烈的亲代影响可能促进了家朱雀种群之间的快速适应性分化。
