"Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family
Common murre (U. aalge) eggs have been widely recorded to display a large spectrum of colors and patterns in natural studies. The functionality for high variation in phenotypes has been proposed to be an identity signal for individual recognition. Because U. aalge breed in highly dense colonies, a s...
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ftprincetonuniv:oai:dataspace.princeton.edu:88435/dsp01vx021h94c 2023-05-15T15:56:04+02:00 "Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family Quach, Lilly Stoddard, Mary 2019-04-22 application/pdf http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01vx021h94c en eng http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01vx021h94c Princeton University Senior Theses 2019 ftprincetonuniv 2022-04-10T21:01:42Z Common murre (U. aalge) eggs have been widely recorded to display a large spectrum of colors and patterns in natural studies. The functionality for high variation in phenotypes has been proposed to be an identity signal for individual recognition. Because U. aalge breed in highly dense colonies, a selective pressure to correctly identify its individual egg should be present and favor eggs that are more distinct in color and pattern when compared to conspecific eggs. Behavior tests have shown U. aalge parents are able identify and retrieve their own eggs when given a foreign egg to choose between. To investigate the evolution of how individual recognition functions from the signaler’s perspective, I quantitatively measure the variation in pattern within a representative avian visual system. I then compare the variation in pattern across closely related species who have also been tested for their ability for individual recognition to understand how it develops. I find supporting evidence that U. aalge eggs are indeed more variable than other species eggs who do not display individual recognition or only partial individual recognition. This study supports color and pattern variation evolved for recognizability in U. aalge eggs. Bachelor Thesis Common Murre DataSpace at Princeton University |
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Common murre (U. aalge) eggs have been widely recorded to display a large spectrum of colors and patterns in natural studies. The functionality for high variation in phenotypes has been proposed to be an identity signal for individual recognition. Because U. aalge breed in highly dense colonies, a selective pressure to correctly identify its individual egg should be present and favor eggs that are more distinct in color and pattern when compared to conspecific eggs. Behavior tests have shown U. aalge parents are able identify and retrieve their own eggs when given a foreign egg to choose between. To investigate the evolution of how individual recognition functions from the signaler’s perspective, I quantitatively measure the variation in pattern within a representative avian visual system. I then compare the variation in pattern across closely related species who have also been tested for their ability for individual recognition to understand how it develops. I find supporting evidence that U. aalge eggs are indeed more variable than other species eggs who do not display individual recognition or only partial individual recognition. This study supports color and pattern variation evolved for recognizability in U. aalge eggs. |
author2 |
Stoddard, Mary |
format |
Bachelor Thesis |
author |
Quach, Lilly |
spellingShingle |
Quach, Lilly "Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family |
author_facet |
Quach, Lilly |
author_sort |
Quach, Lilly |
title |
"Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family |
title_short |
"Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family |
title_full |
"Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family |
title_fullStr |
"Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family |
title_full_unstemmed |
"Leggo my Egg": Investigating Individual Recognition in the Alcidae Family |
title_sort |
"leggo my egg": investigating individual recognition in the alcidae family |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01vx021h94c |
genre |
Common Murre |
genre_facet |
Common Murre |
op_relation |
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01vx021h94c |
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1766391552067764224 |