School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, UK.
J Evol Biol. 2010 Sep 1;23(9):1899-906. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02047.x. Epub 2010 Jul 31.
The extant auks show three strategies of chick rearing--precocial (chicks leave the nest site when a few days old), intermediate (young raised to a mass of around 20% of adult mass) and semi-precocial (young raised to a mass of around 65% of adult mass). It is not known which strategy the extinct Great Auk used. In this paper, we investigate this issue by a novel combination of a time and energy budget model and phylogenetic comparison. The first approach indicates that for reasonable estimates of the equation parameters, the Great Auk could have followed an intermediate strategy. For a limited range of parameters, the Great Auk could have followed the semi-precocial strategy. Phylogenetic comparison shows that it is unlikely that the Great Auk followed a precocial strategy. The results suggest that the Great Auk followed an intermediate strategy as does its presumed closest extant relative the Razorbill.
现存的海雀有三种育雏策略——早成雏（雏鸟在几天大时就离开巢地）、中雏（雏鸟长到成鸟体重的 20%左右）和半早成雏（雏鸟长到成鸟体重的 65%左右）。灭绝的大海雀使用哪种策略尚不清楚。在本文中，我们通过时间和能量预算模型与系统发育比较的新组合来研究这个问题。第一种方法表明，对于方程参数的合理估计，大海雀可能采用了中间策略。对于参数的有限范围，大海雀可能遵循半早成雏策略。系统发育比较表明，大海雀不太可能采用早成雏策略。研究结果表明，大海雀采用了中雏策略，与其假定的最近的现存亲缘种刀嘴海雀相同。
