Jan. 17, 2013 — When it comes to
camouflage, ground-nesting Japanese quail are experts. That's based on new
evidence published online on January 17 in Current Biology that
mother quail "know" the patterning of their own eggs and choose
laying spots to hide them best.
"Not only are the eggs camouflaged, but the
birds choose to lay their eggs on a substrate that maximizes camouflage,"
said P. George Lovell of Abertay University and the University of St Andrews.
"Furthermore, the maximization seems specific to individual birds."
Karen Spencer, also of University of St Andrews
and a co-author, had earlier noticed that female quail lay eggs that vary a lot
in appearance, and that those differences are repeatable. Some birds
consistently lay eggs covered in dark spots; others have many fewer spots or,
in some cases, almost none at all.
That pattern led the researchers to an
intriguing idea: that birds might make optimal egg-laying choices based on the
special characteristics of their own eggs. To find out, they gave female quail
in the lab a choice between four different backgrounds on which to lay their
eggs.
No comments:
Post a Comment