Komdeur Jan, Pen Ido
Zoological Laboratory, University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2002 Mar 29;357(1419):373-80. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2001.0927.
We review some recent theoretical and empirical developments in the study of sex allocation in birds. The advent of reliable molecular sexing techniques has led to a sharp increase in the number of studies that report biased offspring sex ratios in birds. However, compelling evidence for adaptive sex allocation in birds is still very scant. We argue that there are two reasons for this: (i) standard sex allocation models, very helpful in understanding sex allocation of invertebrates, do not sufficiently take the complexities of bird life histories and physiology into account. Recent theoretical work might bring us a step closer to more realistic models; (ii) experimental field and laboratory studies on sex allocation in birds are scarce. Recent experimental work both in the laboratory and in the field shows that this is a promising approach.
我们回顾了鸟类性别分配研究中一些近期的理论和实证进展。可靠的分子性别鉴定技术的出现导致报告鸟类后代性别比例有偏差的研究数量急剧增加。然而，鸟类适应性性别分配的有力证据仍然非常稀少。我们认为有两个原因：（i）标准的性别分配模型在理解无脊椎动物的性别分配方面非常有帮助，但没有充分考虑鸟类生活史和生理学的复杂性。近期的理论工作可能会使我们更接近更现实的模型；（ii）关于鸟类性别分配的实验性野外和实验室研究很少。近期在实验室和野外进行的实验工作表明这是一种有前景的方法。
