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- Title
A TWO-EGG CLUTCH OR POLYGYNY? TWO WHITE-PHASE CHICKS IN THE NEST OF A SOUTHERN GIANT PETREL MACRONECTES GIGANTEUS AT MACQUARIE ISLAND.
- Authors
SHAUGHNESSY, PETER D.
- Abstract
Females of the order Procellariiformes most often produce single-egg clutches. At Macquarie Island (54°S, 159°E) in 1959 during a field study of Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus, four or five nests (0.14-0.18% of all nests) contained two eggs or two chicks (Warham 1962). This species occurs in two plumage forms, a dark phase and a white phase. Inheritance of these forms is controlled by a single autosomal gene with two alleles, with white phase dominant to dark phase. At Macquarie Island in 1959, one nest contained two whitephase chicks brooded by a white-phase adult, which Warham (1962) believed resulted from a two-egg clutch rather than from polygyny. Analyses using probabilities based on the inheritance pattern of plumage phases in Southern Giant Petrels and the frequency of white-phase birds at Macquarie Island in 1959 indicate that it was almost seven times more likely that the two white-phase chicks in the nest brooded by a white-phase adult resulted from a clutch of two eggs rather than from polygyny.
- Subjects
PROCELLARIIFORMES; SOUTHERN giant petrel; MACRONECTES; CHICKS; EGGS
- Publication
Marine Ornithology, 2017, Vol 45, Issue 1, p43
- ISSN
1018-3337
- Publication type
Article