sex-related effects of an immune challenge on growth and begging behavior of barn swallow nestlings与性有关的免疫挑战对增长的影响和燕子雏鸟乞讨行为.pdfVIP

Sex-Related Effects of an Immune Challenge on Growth and Begging Behavior of Barn Swallow Nestlings 1 1 1 2 3 Andrea Romano *, Diego Rubolini , Manuela Caprioli , Giuseppe Boncoraglio , Roberto Ambrosini , Nicola Saino1 ` 1 Dipartimento di Biologia, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy, 2 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 3 Dipartimento ` di Biotecnologie e Bioscienze, Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy Abstract Parent-offspring conflicts lead the offspring to evolve reliable signals of individual quality, including parasite burden, which may allow parents to adaptively modulate investment in the progeny. Sex-related variation in offspring reproductive value, however, may entail differential investment in sons and daughters. Here, we experimentally manipulated offspring condition in the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) by subjecting nestlings to an immune challenge (injection with bacterial lipopolysaccharide, LPS) that simulates a bacterial infection, and assessed the effects on growth, feather quality, expression of morphological (gape coloration) and behavioral (posture) begging displays involved in parent-offspring communication, as well as on food allocation by parents. Compared to sham-injected controls, LPS-treated chicks suffered a depression of body mass and a reduction of palate color saturation. In addition, LPS treatment resulted in lower feather quality, with an increase in the occurrence of fault bars on wing feathers. The color of beak flanges, feather growth and the intensity of postural begging were affected by