Environmental determination of a sexually selected trait

Simon C. Griffith (), Ian P. F. Owens and Terry Burke
Additional contact information
Simon C. Griffith: University of Leicester
Ian P. F. Owens: University of Queensland
Terry Burke: University of Leicester

Nature, 1999, vol. 400, issue 6742, 358-360

Abstract: Abstract Models of sexual selection usually assume that variation in the expression of sexual ornaments is determined largely by genetic, rather than environmental, factors1. However, empirical support for this assumption comes from studies of species with little parental care1,2, in which the influence of environmental factors may be limited3,4, and from studies of just two species5,6 with parental care, in both of which heritability estimates vary hugely between years or populations7,8. In the remaining studies of species with parental care, it is not known whether resemblance in sexual ornamentation between relatives was due to shared genes or shared patterns of care3,4,9,10,11,12,13,14,15. Here we use cross-fostering experiments in house sparrows, Passer domesticus, to examine the relative roles of these effects. We demonstrate that, although sons resemble their fathers with respect to sexual ornamentation, this resemblance is mainly due to post-hatching environmental effects rather than shared genes. We also show that sons hatching early in the year have the largest ornaments. These results support models that emphasize the importance of environmental sources of variation16,17,18, such as direct paternal effects4,19,20, on the expression of sexual ornaments, and agree with the general observation that sexually selected traits tend to be condition dependent1. We urge the incorporation of gene–environment interactions into future models of sexual selection.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/22536 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:400:y:1999:i:6742:d:10.1038_22536

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/22536

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().