Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Biol Lett. 2012 Feb 23;8(1):108-11. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0735. Epub 2011 Aug 24.
Parental effects play a vital role in shaping offspring phenotype. In birds, incubation behaviour is a critical parental effect because it influences the early developmental environment and can therefore have lifelong consequences for offspring phenotype. Recent studies that manipulated incubation temperature found effects on hatchling body composition, condition and growth, suggesting that incubation temperature could also affect energetically costly physiological processes of young birds that are important to survival (e.g. immune responses). We artificially incubated wood duck (Aix sponsa) eggs at three biologically relevant temperatures. Following incubation, we used two immunoassays to measure acquired immune responses of ducklings. Ducklings incubated at the lowest temperature had reduced growth, body condition and responses to both of our immune challenges, compared with those from the higher temperatures. Our results show that incubation temperatures can be an important driver of phenotypic variation in avian populations.
亲代效应在塑造后代表型方面起着至关重要的作用。在鸟类中，孵化行为是一种重要的亲代效应，因为它影响着早期的发育环境，因此对后代的表型有着终身的影响。最近的一些研究通过操纵孵化温度发现，孵化温度会影响雏鸟的身体成分、健康状况和生长，这表明孵化温度也可能影响年轻鸟类的能量消耗生理过程，这些过程对鸟类的生存至关重要（例如免疫反应）。我们在三个与生物学相关的温度下对美洲绒鸭（Aix sponsa）的蛋进行了人工孵化。孵化后，我们使用两种免疫分析方法来测量幼鸭的获得性免疫反应。与较高温度下的幼鸭相比，在最低温度下孵化的幼鸭的生长、身体状况和对我们的两种免疫挑战的反应都有所降低。我们的研究结果表明，孵化温度可能是鸟类种群表型变异的一个重要驱动因素。
