Interaction between Maternal Effects: Onset of Incubation and Offspring Sex in Two Populations of a Passerine Bird

Maternal phenotype and maternal environment can profoundly affect the phenotype and fitness of offspring. Yet the causes of variation in such maternal effects are rarely known. Embryos in avian eggs cannot develop without being incubated and this creates an opportunity for maternal control of durati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Oecologia 2003-05, Vol.135 (3), p.386-390
Main Authors: Badyaev, Alexander V., Hill, Geoffrey E., Beck, Michelle L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambient temperature
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
Aves
Biological and medical sciences
Bird nesting
Birds
Climate
Demecology
Ecological conditions
Eggs
Embryonic and Fetal Development - physiology
Embryonic Development
Environmental conditions
Female
Female animals
Finches
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender bias
Incubation
Male animals
Maternal effect
Offspring
Phenotype
Population Dynamics
Population Ecology
Sex Ratio
Songbirds - physiology
Temperature
Vertebrata
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Summary:Maternal phenotype and maternal environment can profoundly affect the phenotype and fitness of offspring. Yet the causes of variation in such maternal effects are rarely known. Embryos in avian eggs cannot develop without being incubated and this creates an opportunity for maternal control of duration and onset of offspring development. However, females might adjust the start of incubation (e.g., coincident with the first egg or delayed until after egg-laying) in response to environmental conditions that they experience at the time of breeding. We studied two populations of the house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) that breed at the climatic extremes of the species' geographical range (Montana and Alabama) and found that in both populations, the timing of incubation onset was closely associated with the bias in the sequence in which male and female eggs were laid within a clutch. When females started incubation with the first egg, they produced sons and daughters in highly biased sequence, when females delayed the onset of incubation until after the egg-laying, the sequence of sons and daughters was not biased. Because in both populations, onset of incubation was associated with the ambient temperature, these results emphasize that maternal effects on offspring can be influenced by ecological conditions experienced by parental generation.
ISSN:0029-8549
1432-1939
DOI:10.1007/s00442-003-1203-x