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Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone
Same-sex sexual behaviour has been noted among social animals. However, because of the large number of observations necessary, data from controlled experiments are lacking. In this study, we performed experiments to evaluate the effects of male and female removal in colonies of the feral pigeon (Col...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5785962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29374281 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20128-3 |
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author | Jankowiak, Łukasz Tryjanowski, Piotr Hetmański, Tomasz Skórka, Piotr |
author_facet | Jankowiak, Łukasz Tryjanowski, Piotr Hetmański, Tomasz Skórka, Piotr |
author_sort | Jankowiak, Łukasz |
collection | PubMed |
description | Same-sex sexual behaviour has been noted among social animals. However, because of the large number of observations necessary, data from controlled experiments are lacking. In this study, we performed experiments to evaluate the effects of male and female removal in colonies of the feral pigeon (Columba livia f. urbana). After the experimental removal of males, five long-lasting female-female pairs occurred. We found that those pairs could successfully raise offspring in a manner comparable to female-male pairs. Same-sex sexual behaviour and pairing in females is thus a better alternative to postponed breeding or breeding alone without the help of a partner. In contrast, in the case of female-removal experiments, same-sex pairing behaviour occurred in males as a temporary phenomenon with characteristic mutual aggression. Additionally, under a male-biased sex ratio, we observed father-son and father-daughter copulations. To the best of our knowledge, these results are the first obtained under controlled experimental conditions which demonstrate that the sex ratio of a population can shift the social structure and cause cooperative same-sex breeding behaviour to arise in a monogamous species. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5785962 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57859622018-02-07 Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone Jankowiak, Łukasz Tryjanowski, Piotr Hetmański, Tomasz Skórka, Piotr Sci Rep Article Same-sex sexual behaviour has been noted among social animals. However, because of the large number of observations necessary, data from controlled experiments are lacking. In this study, we performed experiments to evaluate the effects of male and female removal in colonies of the feral pigeon (Columba livia f. urbana). After the experimental removal of males, five long-lasting female-female pairs occurred. We found that those pairs could successfully raise offspring in a manner comparable to female-male pairs. Same-sex sexual behaviour and pairing in females is thus a better alternative to postponed breeding or breeding alone without the help of a partner. In contrast, in the case of female-removal experiments, same-sex pairing behaviour occurred in males as a temporary phenomenon with characteristic mutual aggression. Additionally, under a male-biased sex ratio, we observed father-son and father-daughter copulations. To the best of our knowledge, these results are the first obtained under controlled experimental conditions which demonstrate that the sex ratio of a population can shift the social structure and cause cooperative same-sex breeding behaviour to arise in a monogamous species. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-01-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5785962/ /pubmed/29374281 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20128-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Jankowiak, Łukasz Tryjanowski, Piotr Hetmański, Tomasz Skórka, Piotr Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
title | Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
title_full | Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
title_fullStr | Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
title_full_unstemmed | Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
title_short | Experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
title_sort | experimentally evoked same-sex sexual behaviour in pigeons: better to be in a female-female pair than alone |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5785962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29374281 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20128-3 |
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