Female Zebra Finches Smell Their Eggs.

Clicks: 435
ID: 50783
2016
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Abstract
Parental investment in unrelated offspring seems maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective, due to the costs of energy and resources that cannot be invested in related offspring at the same time. Therefore selection should favour mechanisms to discriminate between own and foreign offspring. In birds, much emphasis has been placed on understanding the visual mechanisms underlying egg recognition. However, olfactory egg recognition has almost been completely ignored. Here, we investigated whether female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) are able to discriminate between their own and a conspecific egg based on olfactory cues alone. Zebra finches are colonial-breeding songbirds. Eggs are monomorphic, i.e. without any spotting pattern, and intraspecific brood parasitism frequently occurs. In a binary choice experiment, female zebra finches were given the choice between the scent of their own and a conspecific egg. After the onset of incubation, females chose randomly and showed no sign of discrimination. However, shortly before hatching, females preferred significantly the odour of their own egg. The finding that females are capable to smell their own egg may inspire more research on the potential of olfaction involved in egg recognition, especially in cases where visual cues might be limited.
Reference Key
goluke2016femaleplos Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Golüke, Sarah;Dörrenberg, Sebastian;Krause, E Tobias;Caspers, Barbara A;
Journal PloS one
Year 2016
DOI
DOI not found
URL
http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4871452?pdf=render
Keywords
Zoology Botany Medicine Science public aspects of medicine social sciences (general) arctic medicine. tropical medicine environmental law economic growth, development, planning

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