Master songsters produce heartier kin.Many species of birds engage in so-called extra-pair copulations. For these affairs, females in some species find males whose song repertoires are bigger than the playlist A file that contains an index to a selected group of music files on the computer. Using digital jukebox software such as iTunes and Winamp, playlists are created by the user by dragging and dropping titles from a master index. The software may be able to create a playlist automatically. of their regular partner (SN: 5/4/96, p. 280). Females probably pick these multisong crooners because their offspring have the best chance of surviving, assert Dennis Hasselquist and his colleagues at Lund University Lund University has 7 faculties, with additional campuses in the cities of Malmö and Helsingborg, with a total of over 42,500 people studying in 50 different programmes and 800 separate courses. in Sweden. From 1987 to 1993, the group studied the great reed warblers The Great Reed Warbler, Acrocephalus arundinaceus, is an Old World warbler in the genus Acrocephalus. It breeds in Europe and westernmost temperate Asia. It is migratory, wintering in tropical Africa. It does not breed in Great Britain, but is a regular visitor. (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) at Kvismaren, Sweden, during the birds' breeding season Breeding season is the most suitable season usually with favorable conditions and abundant food and water when wild animals and birds (wildlife) have naturally evolved to breed to achieve the best reproductive success. , from May to July. The female warblers engaged in extra-pair copulations with neighboring males, but only if the neighbor sang more songs than the female's steady mate. Using DNA fingerprinting DNA fingerprinting or DNA profiling, any of several similar techniques for analyzing and comparing DNA from separate sources, used especially in law enforcement to identify suspects from hair, blood, semen, or other biological materials found at to match males with their offspring, the scientists found that the larger the father's repertoire, the greater the survival rate of his offspring. The group reports its finding in the May 16 Nature. "The correlation is not fabulous, but it's there, and yes, it's surprising," says Michael D. Beecher of the University of Washington in Seattle. |
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