Behavioural Differences Between Zebrafinch and Bengalese Finch (Foster) Parents Raising Zebrafinch Offspring

Behaviour ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 81 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 152-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carel TEN CATE

AbstractSexually mature zebrafinch males show a sexual preference for the species which has raised them. IMMELMANN (1972 a, b) stated that such a preference develops more readily if zebrafinch males were exposed to their own species than to Bengalese finches. The explanation for this phenomenon has been the supposition that an initial bias for the own species exists which is independent of post hatch experience. This hypothesis presupposes the absence of differences in behaviour between zebrafinch and Bengalese finch parents raising zebrafinch offspring. To investigate this supposition, the parental behaviour of zebrafinch and Bengalese finch (foster)parents raising zebrafinch offspring was observed. This was done in pure pairs (male and female of the same species) as well as in mixed pairs (male and female of different species). Differences between both species were found in parental care, and in clumping, allopreening, aggressive and sexual behaviour directed to zebrafinch young; most clearly in mixed, but often in pure pairs too. These differences were present from a few days after hatching till the moment of separating parents and young at about day 57. The kind of differences gradually changed during this period. Zebrafinch young are thus not exposed to equivalent experience with zebrafinch and Bengalese finch parents. The observed differences in experience may underly the more readily developing preference for zebrafinch than for Bengalese finch. This alternative should be explored more thorougly before the initial bias hypothesis is accepted.

Behaviour ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos de la Cruz ◽  
Mónica Expósito-Granados ◽  
Juliana Valencia

Abstract In many species of cooperative breeding birds, breeders and helpers participate in the parental care with different food provision rules. Normally, helpers feed nestlings less frequently and with smaller quantities of food than breeders. But studies analysing the reaction of feeders to nestling demand are scarce and rarely measure the quantity of food that is actually delivered. In this study, we analysed the provisioning effort of breeders and helpers in the Iberian Magpie, Cyanopica cooki, and how this effort varies with brood demand. We did so by measuring the nestling feeding rate and the biomass supply of each individual. In this way, we obtained a more accurate measurement of the investment assumed by each individual belonging to each status. We found that breeding males visited the nest more often than both breeding females and helpers (mean = 2.24; 0.85 and 1.58, respectively). Furthermore, breeding males delivered more biomass in each feeding visit to the nest than those from other statuses. Breeders, both male and female, increased their parental effort (i.e., provisioning rate and biomass) when brood demand was higher (i.e., more siblings and older nestlings), whereas helpers contributed differently to the nest, but depending on the two types of helpers occurring in this species. Differences in the possible benefits obtained by breeders and helpers may explain these different strategies. In addition, male and female breeders (but not helpers) reduce the feeding rate throughout the breeding season. Thus, in the Iberian magpie, breeders and helpers reveal different patterns of investment depending on nestling food demand.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 20170188 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Criscuolo ◽  
Sandrine Zahn ◽  
Pierre Bize

A growing body of studies is showing that offspring telomere length (TL) can be influenced by the age of their parents. Such a relationship might be explained by variation in TL at conception (gamete effect) and/or by alteration of early growth conditions in species providing parental care. In a long-lived bird with bi-parental care, the Alpine swift ( Apus melba ), we exchanged an uneven number of 2 to 4-day-old nestlings between pairs as part of a brood size manipulation. Nestling TL was measured at 50 days after hatching, which allowed investigation of the influence of the age of both their biological and foster parents on offspring TL, after controlling for the manipulation. Nestling TL was negatively related to the age of their biological father and foster mother. Nestling TL did not differ between enlarged and reduced broods. These findings suggest that offspring from older males were fertilized by gametes with shorter telomeres, presumably due to a greater cell division history or a longer accumulation of damage, and that older females may have provided poorer parental care to their offspring.


2004 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Gordana Kovacek-Stanic

In the jubilee year 2004, Serbia marks the 200th anniversary of The First Serbian Uprising, structuring of modern Serbian state and its legal system comparatively speaking, France marks the 200th anniversary of passing the French Civil Code, one of the most significant civil codifications in the 19th century. It was an occasion to study certain institutions of family law through history and today. The used approach is modern, we studied the ways how the principle of self-determination influenced the family-legal solutions today, and we investigated if one could talk about the effect of this principle in the historical sense, too. The principle of self-determination implies the possibility for the subjects of family-legal relations to arrange their own relations themselves ? both the partner and parent relations. However, this principle undergoes significant limitations in the family law because the family relations are personal relations by character, as well as because of the need to protect the weaker participant, both the weaker partner or a child who needs protection stemming from his/her very status. Within marriage law, the principle of self-determination of the spouses (extramarital partners) is, among other things, made concrete through the possibility for an agreement about the effects of marriage (extramarital union), then through the possibility of agreed divorce, while the procedure of mediation in the marriage litigation contributes to the realization of the mentioned principle. As for the effects of marriage (extramarital union), the paper particularly discusses property relations, that is the marriage property contract, because it is at the moment a current issue in our domestic law. Within the relations between parents and children, the concretization of the principle of self-determination in parental care is significant, particularly in the situations when the relations between the parents were disturbed and resulted in a separation or a divorce with the joint parental care (application of the parental right). All institutions are analyzed in the positive law, in the historical context (solutions from the Serbian Civil Code the former Hungarian Law), and viewed comparatively in the European legal systems of the east and west European countries.


Author(s):  
Leigh W. Simmons

‘Sex roles and stereotypes’ examines the notion, implicit in many of the original ideas about sexual selection, that males and females have natural ‘roles’ with characteristic behaviour associated with each sex. It also explores further the reasons behind deviations from the ‘typical’ sex roles in mate choice and in mating competition. Are there ‘standard’ male and female roles in both humans and other animal species? One version of sex roles holds that males are generally dominant and females submissive, stemming from the way that sexual selection favours different behaviours in each sex. This could mean that sexual selection dictates particular behaviours in males and females. But in fact, sexual behaviour is extraordinarily varied in nature.


The Auk ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 105 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianne H. Brunton

Abstract The reproductive investment strategies of the sexes during the breeding season are detailed for Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus), a monogamous plover. I measured the energy investments of the sexes in reproductive, mating, and parental effort. As predicted, males expend more mating effort than females; however, the sexes expend equal amounts of parental effort. Total energy expenditure in reproductive effort (mating and parental effort) during a successful nesting attempt was also equal for the sexes. However, early parental effort expenditures by females, early mating effort expenditures by males, and high rates of nest failure combine to result in female reproductive energy expenditures being significantly higher over the breeding season. This suggests that energy expenditure alone is not adequate for accurate comparisons of the relative investments of the sexes. Studies investigating male and female investments need to consider the degree and pattern of nest failures along with patterns of energy expenditure. The advantages to male and female Killdeer of sharing parental care is demonstrated using adult removal experiments. In general, a deserted parent expends more energy in parental effort than a bi-parental parent and has significantly lower reproductive success. However, males are able to hatch chicks, whereas females lose or abandon their nests within a few days of mate removal. Thus, monogamy in Killdeer appears to result from high nest failure rates, the necessity of two parents for any reproductive success, and the generalizable nature of Killdeer parental care.


Ethology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle A. Fetherston ◽  
Michelle Pellissier Scott ◽  
James F. A. Traniello

1977 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
VERONICA A. CERNY

Laboratory of Anatomy, Department of Animal Biology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, U.S.A. (Received 28 March 1977) Testosterones have stimulatory effects on peripheral target tissue and sexual behaviour in male and female rats (Beach, 1942), guinea-pigs (Young, 1961; Diamond & Young, 1963), rabbits (Palka & Sawyer, 1966; Beyer & Rivaud, 1973) and cats (Green, Clemente & de Groot, 1957; Young, 1961; Whalen & Hardy, 1970). 5α-Androstan-17β-ol-3-one (dihydrotestosterone, DHT) has stimulatory effects on peripheral target organs, and like testosterones, a negative feedback effect on the pituitary gland and hypothalamus (Feder, 1971). No behavioural effects were seen in male or female rats when DHT was injected systemically (Beyer, Morali & Cruz, 1971; Feder, 1971) nor in the male rat when it was administered intracerebrally (Johnston & Davidson, 1972). Many experiments support the hypothesis that only androgens that can be aromatized to oestrogens can elicit sexual behaviour and


Ibis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 158 (4) ◽  
pp. 796-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dóra Kötél ◽  
Miklós Laczi ◽  
János Török ◽  
Gergely Hegyi

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