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- Keeling, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Chicken genomics : feather-pecking and victim pigmentation.
- 2004
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 431:7009
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Feather-pecking in domestic birds is associated with cannibalism and severe welfare problems. It is a dramatic example of a spiteful behaviour in which the victim's fitness is reduced for no immediate direct benefit to the perpetrator and its evolution is unexplained. Here we show that the plumage pigmentation of a chicken may predispose it to become a victim: birds suffer more drastic feather-pecking when the colour of their plumage is due to the expression of a wild recessive allele at PMEL17, a gene that controls plumage melanization, and when these birds are relatively common in a flock. These findings, obtained using an intercross between a domestic fowl and its wild ancestor, have implications for the welfare of domestic species and offer insight into the genetic changes associated with the evolution of feather-pecking during the early stages of domestication.
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