
Henrik Smith
Professor

Heritability of nestling growth in cross-fostered European Starlings, Sturnus vulgaris
Författare
Summary, in English
In altricial birds, growth rates and nestling morphology vary between broods. For natural selection to produce evolutionary change in these variables, there must exist heritable variation. Since nestling traits are not any longer present in parents, traditional offspring-parent regressions cannot estimate heritabilities of these. In this study, a partial cross-fostering experiment was performed, where nestlings of the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) were reciprocally exchanged between nests. The experiment demonstrated a significant heritability of nestling tarsus length and body mass, but not of the growth trajectories followed by individual nestlings. The heritability estimate for tarsus length obtained in the cross-fostering experiment using full-sib analysis was lower than those obtained by offspring-parent regressions. This is likely due to a genotype-by-environment effect on tarsus length, with nestlings destined to become large but in poor condition having a low probability of appearing as parents. The main reason for the low heritability of growth was probably the large within-brood variation in growth pattern due to the initial size hierarchy of nestlings. Nestlings demonstrated targeted growth, where small-sized nestlings that initially grew slower than their siblings, managed to catch up.
Avdelning/ar
- Centrum för miljö- och klimatvetenskap (CEC)
- Biodiversitet
- Biodiversitet och bevarandevetenskap
Publiceringsår
1996
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
657-665
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Genetics
Volym
141
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Genetics Society of America
Ämne
- Zoology
Status
Published
Forskningsgrupp
- Biodiversity and Conservation Science
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0016-6731