Written By: Samantha Bernickus
Resource: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110720085653.htm
Summary: Researchers have found that female Zebra Finches can lay more eggs due to the attractiveness of the male Finch. One of the researchers tried to manipulate the attractiveness and put colored rings around the male’s legs. This showed that it was really the mother’s perception of the male’s attraction. Material behavior can influence offspring in various ways and these types of behavior can help us find insight on evolutionary processes. 'We wanted to look at environmental cues that aren't as obvious as how much food the mother has -- like what role her psychology might play,' explains Dr Lucy Gilbert of the James Hutton Institute, lead author of the report published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 'And we wanted to see how long these non-genetic effects might last down through the generations.' The test help to aim more on the mothers perception and they found that female Finches like the red ring around the leg more than the color green for the males. So they took 70 male Finches and put green and red rings around their legs and put them each with a female Finch. Once they laid eggs the people took all the clutches and put them with different parents. They did this to let the female can still react to the attractiveness of her mate. The next thing they did was got the daughters to mate with other male Finches by their choice and see how their eggs turned out according to how attractive their fathers were. It was proven that the daughters with attractive fathers produced more and heavier eggs then one with not attractive fathers.
Critique: This article was to me not very important but interesting. People don’t really care how attractive a bird is but if they help make more birds then that is a good thing.
Impact: The impact this has is that if people get more attractive Finches for the female Finches more Finches will be made so they don’t go extinct.
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