From the Winter 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. This story is adapted from a post on TWS Wildlife Newspublished by The Wildlife Society.
A model study called the avian version of the dating app Tinder shows that giving females little choice between prospective mates can significantly improve the output of a captive breeding program for a critically endangered species of Hawaiian honeycreeper.
“If we pair the female with the male she’s been with longer, we get more eggs at the end of the season,” said Alison Greggor, a researcher at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Akikiki live only in the mountains on the island of Kauai, and only a few dozen remain in the wild, predicting extinction within the next few years as wildlife managers struggle to find ways to stop the spread of the disease. mosquitoes that carry malaria. In a last-ditch effort to save the species, wildlife managers from a multi-group partnership brought some Akikiki eggs into captivity in 2015. Given the low numbers of Akikiki left, scientists are looking for ways to improve the birds’ fertility in captivity, with the hope of one day releasing them back into the wild.
Most research in captive breeding programs focuses on maximizing the genetic match between couples. But in a study published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice in March, Greggor and his colleagues examined whether allowing an Akikiki woman to choose her mate would improve fertility.
The setup is like Tinder for birds: Instead of swiping left or right, the researchers put the female in an aviary in the middle, flanked by two enclosures with a male on either side of her— she can choose the man on the right or the left.
At first, researchers weren’t sure if they could predict women’s preferences. They set up perches near the males on either side and watched, observing interactions such as when the females would share food with a male on the other side. They found that a woman’s choice was best predicted by the man she was with longer. And at the end of the breeding season, the researchers found that females mated with their preferred mates laid four to seven eggs on average, while females with unwanted males laid only two to three. egg.
“It’s a pretty big difference,” Greggor said, and one that could bring a big boost for the captive breeding program. He points out that this type of research shows that successful breeding is not just about making a good genetic match, and that mate choice can play a big role “for improving breeding outcomes.” -child.”
