2/24/2023 0 Comments Zebra finchWhile males in both groups courted their lovers without second thought, female finches in forced pairings were much less responsive to these overtures. Tension among the arranged pairings was immediately evident. Over the course of several months, all the birds were given time to bond with their partners (forced or chosen) before being released in a communal aviary to breed. Once the birds were coupled up, though, the scientists butted in and did a little twisted match-making of their own: Half the couples were separated and forced into new pairs, while the other half were left alone. Zebra Finches make the perfect subjects for such an investigation, because they're monogamous birds that often mate for life, sharing nesting and offspring rearing duties (though they’re also known to enjoy an occasional midnight rendezvous with a sultry neighboring finch). To find out how much love matters when it comes to reproduction, the researchers put single Zebra Finches in a sort of speed-dating chamber, and allowed them to select a partner at will.įemales, who do the mate selecting, clearly had personal preferences, even if their rationale for those choices wasn't immediately clear to the researchers (there’s no obvious beauty standard among these birds). That’s exactly what 160 Zebra Finches faced during a recent study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany-though to be fair, the scientists weren’t necessarily mad, just very curious about the role love (or "behavioral compatibility," as they like to call it) plays in successful bird reproduction. The Zebra Finch will remain an excellent species for laboratory work, and our paper should help to direct and interpret future work in the laboratory and the field.Love is complicated-ask anyone who's ever been forced into an arranged marriage at the hands of mad scientists. Whilst it is tempting for researchers to turn to species such as the Zebra Finch, that can be the focus of manipulative work in the laboratory, we caution that the findings of such studies may confound our understanding of general avian biology. The Zebra Finch is likely to be particularly resilient to the effects of stress early in life, and is likely to show great flexibility in dealing with a wide variety of conditions later in life. The main point of our paper is that the very characteristics that make the Zebra Finch a highly amenable laboratory model species mean that it is by definition different from many other passerine birds, and therefore not a good general model for many research areas. Their adoption as the avian model of choice is largely down to a number of characteristics that make them easy to obtain and use in captivity. Zebra Finches have become the most widely researched bird species outside of those used in agricultural production. Our paper should help to direct future research on the Zebra Finch in the wild and laboratory. The Zebra Finch is unlikely to be a good ‘model’ of general bird life history or behaviour, and is certainly very different from many of the well-studied birds in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, in many research fields, and particularly those focused on behaviour and life history evolution, great care needs to be taken in using the species appropriately and interpreting the results. Here, we argue that whilst these characteristics do indeed make it an excellent species for conducting captive experiments in a controlled environment, they also make it an outlier amongst birds. The species can be maintained and bred easily on a very poor diet and is the fastest maturing bird in the world. It has been so widely used because of key physiological, behavioural and life history characteristics. The Zebra Finch ( Taeniopygia guttata) is the focus of more work in the laboratory than any other non-production bird.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |