Attractive male birds boost breeding
Female birds watching handsome males strutting about were more fertile, and their chicks grew faster. © Adeline Loyau, UFZ/CNRS???aural:Bildende???
Attractive male birds seem to turn on brooding females of the same species, improving offspring growth. Scientists carried out an experiment with the North African Houbara Bustard, a vulnerable species with a very distinctive courtship behaviour.
Females watching flashy male birds in the experiment were more fertile and were better breeders. More testosterone in their eggs led to a greater growth rate in their chicks. Using artificial insemination without getting the breeding females in the right mood probably has negative impacts on their breeding performance and can therefore even affect the survival of a species, the results showed.
Behavioural biologist Adeline Loyau of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the French CNRS station for experimental ecology and her colleague Frederic Lacroix of the Emirates Center for Wildlife Propagation (ECWP) arranged “rendezvous” for brooding Houbara Bustard females (Chlamydotis undulata undulata) with either highly or poorly displaying male birds. During the experiment, the female birds were artificially inseminated and kept isolated in aviaries five metres apart from birds of the same species in other aviaries. So all that counted in the experiment was how good-looking the males were.
“To my knowledge, our study is the first example in species conservation of a successful manipulation of maternal allocation of resources through sensory stimulation,” explains Loyau. “Our results show that it is possible to control maternal allocation of resources independent of the quality of male genes.” So male birds pleasing to the eye give females a clear signal, offering conservationists a simple and inexpensive means to promote breeding results into the bargain. This could prove very helpful in improving captive breeding programmes of other threatened bird species.
More information: www.ufz.de/presse/pleasingtotheeye
Contact: Dr. Klaus Henle, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)
Klaus.Henle@ufz.de
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