[HN Gopher] The fascinating and complicated sex lives of white-t...
___________________________________________________________________
The fascinating and complicated sex lives of white-throated
sparrows
Author : laurex
Score : 159 points
Date : 2024-07-15 02:55 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.audubon.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.audubon.org)
| downboots wrote:
| I see a scientist using a red band tag first and later in the
| video a silver-blue one for a different bird. Do they control for
| tag color when banding birds? https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)... some birds are known for their
| color/visual preferences and the measurement could ostensibly be
| a cause for the results: a confounding variable like in those
| mice studies where male or female scent inadvertently affected
| rat behaviour.
| rattus_rattus wrote:
| I suspect that it would be quite difficult to control for that,
| since my understanding is that they specifically use different
| color combos on each bird in a specific area. This lets the
| scientists easily ID the bird by sight or in a photo, vs. all
| silver bands with a stamped code. The latter would require them
| to re-catch the bird to ID it, defeating the purpose of
| observing behavior and IDing individuals as it happens. I would
| also guess that it isn't really a factor in the birds'
| behavior, though.
| zxexz wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is 100% it but I'm not aware of any
| standards. I have spent a bit of time watching wildlife
| ecologists do bird banding at one site and they had a log of
| all the rings, so they could identify them by sight. Because
| there are limited color combinations, they segmented by
| species, sex for some species to make it easier. Common CS
| algorithms show up everywhere in the real world :)
|
| I wonder if different ecology/conservation groups coordinate
| their algorithms and databases.
|
| I participated once, but oh my god was it terrifying. The
| care with which one needs to remove the bird from the net and
| handle it is unnerving, especially with tiny songbirds.
| Weighing them is really cute. Massive respect for people who
| do it day in and day out.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I have a friend who worked on a project here in NZ where he
| made bird boxes with built in scales. It had a solar panel
| and a LoRa to get results back to base. It had a series of
| calculation to work out how much feeding was going on etc.
| From memory the boxes are on Hauraki Gulf islands -
| Tiritiri Matangi is one location I think.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| It seems, to me, a similar dynamic to human pairings (at the
| edges). The more dominate aggressive females go for the more
| nurturing males, and vice versa. Then you're left with having
| pairings of dominate types who fight like 'cats & dogs', and
| never really know much about the more subdued pairings.
| space_oddity wrote:
| It's an interesting perspective on human relationships
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I agree- humans have almost exactly the same dynamic. Our
| language doesn't even have accurate words for it because it is
| culturally unacceptable to be a more (submissive? feminine?)
| man or a more (dominant? masculine?) woman yet it's actually
| quite common and despite stereotypes it is a totally separate
| thing from gender or sexual orientation. The "wrong" pairings
| rarely work out in relationships.
|
| I believe many cultures and languages are more consciously
| aware of this- for example the Chinese concept of yin and yang
| being important in dating and relationships.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| One can certainly point to human pairings like this, but I
| don't know of any studies that show it as a general trend or
| tendency. One can also point to power couples and quiet couples
| just as easily.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| We can't expect studies to be possible with topics like this
| in the near future. As I mentioned in my other comments, we
| don't even have cultural concepts or language to capture this
| in a meaningful way, not alone some kind of objective test
| that could form the basis of a scientific study.
|
| They could only do it in this bird because of the striking
| visual difference, and without it they wouldn't have been
| able to study this at all.
|
| I think it can be observed firsthand if you have experience
| dating a lot of different people, and the dynamic becomes
| quite obvious... but you could not easily categorize a person
| that you haven't known sexually or romantically in this way.
| It's quite striking the intense 'chemistry' when you are
| paired with someone that is on the complementary end of this
| spectrum from you, and the lack of it when you are not.
|
| I think words like "power couples" and "quiet couples" are
| looking at something different are are themselves not even
| opposites- I think you are looking at something like
| ambition/goal directedness, and introversion.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Since we are talking bird and mating rituals, HN member once
| pointed out to me the fascinating bowerbird mating rituals[1]
| that result in them building fairly ornate structures showcasing
| their resource gathering skills.
|
| [1]https://blog.nature.org/2021/01/04/bowerbirds-meet-the-
| bird-...
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Wow that really was fascinating!
|
| Went down a bit of a bower-hole there!
|
| The golden bower birds are incredible but they are all super
| interesting.
| worldvoyageur wrote:
| Two sexes (male, female), each with two variants (white throat,
| yellow throat), creating four genders (wM, yM, wF, yF).
|
| Males and females need to pair or there will be no new sparrows.
| However opposite variants also need to pair or for behaviour
| reasons there will be no successful young.
|
| For instance, wM-wF spend so much energy fighting with each other
| they fail to raise young.
|
| The y variants are less aggressive but better with young and are
| the most popular mate choices. The y-variants are also monogomous
| while the w-variants are not.
|
| The aggressive w-variants grab all the y-variants as partners.
| The result is that y-y pairs are rarely (never?) seen, even
| though they could produce young.
|
| The article notes that yellow throats have different food
| strategies from white throats. This will also tend to reinforce
| alternate gender pairing.
|
| An MF pair is going to bring in less food if both are going after
| the same sources (they might start fighting!) while if each has a
| different strategy the young are less vulnerable to food
| shortages should one strategy or another not produce at any given
| time.
|
| The four gender outcome seems to be in a sustainable equilibrium.
| If one is favoured, say wM-yF, then these sparrows would become
| like most other birds, with males having one colour pattern and
| females another.
|
| Instead, behaviours have somehow distributed themselves across
| genders so a successful couple needs to match both if they are to
| raise the next generation of young.
| bko wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Within each gender, white-striped birds are more aggressive
| while tan-striped birds are more nurturing. That seemingly
| simple generalization is based on a vast amount of research.
| For many years, Falls and his students at the University of
| Toronto carried out highly detailed studies of White-throated
| Sparrows, showing how behavioral differences between the morphs
| touched every aspect of these birds' lives.
|
| Why would you define this variation that's associated with
| behavior "gender"? Isn't the whole distinction between gender
| and sex is one is biological and the other societal? If there
| is a hereditary biological indicator that determines this
| behavior, shouldn't it fall outside of the gender concept? I
| don't know how useful it is to add these human constructs to
| the biological world when it could be easily observed and
| discussed without the confusion
| mandmandam wrote:
| > Why would you define this variation that's associated with
| behavior "gender"?
|
| People use imperfect analogies all the time. Also words can
| have multiple meanings, especially across different fields.
| No one is complaining that their electrical 'resistors' are
| confusing their understanding of non-violent resistance.
|
| > Isn't the whole distinction between gender and sex is one
| is biological and the other societal?
|
| In people. These are birds. See above about words having
| multiple meanings.
|
| > If there is a hereditary biological indicator that
| determines this behavior, shouldn't it fall outside of the
| gender concept?
|
| Why would it. A, applying the "gender concept" of humans to
| birds is silly. B, "hereditary biological indicators" and
| gender can overlap in humans too.
|
| > it could be easily observed and discussed without the
| confusion
|
| I don't see at all why it would be confusing, and no one else
| seems confused. The English language does this _literally_
| all the time.
| empthought wrote:
| The "genders" analogy is a conceit of this article's author
| alone. It is not what any researcher uses. The remarkable
| feature of these birds is not the behavioral divergence but
| the underlying genetic factors driving dissortative mating.
| If any analogy is appropriate, it's "sex" not "gender."
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/539482a
| cauch wrote:
| On top of what is said in the other comment (indeed, "gender"
| is perfectly fine, there is no real confusion), it's also
| worth noting that the "more aggressive" and "more nurturing"
| sparrows have a different color, and color is a biological
| trait.
|
| I think that the distinction between "biological" and
| "cultural" is a bit of a non-issue for the professionals.
| They don't know if it's cultural or biological, but it does
| not matter, and in fact, the reality is probably that
| untangling cultural from biological is impossible (not in the
| sense that the culture is a direct result of the biology, but
| in the sense that biological development does not care to
| make the distinction if the conditions that shape its
| direction are biological or cultural, and that a final trait
| is therefore the result of a complicated mix of the two).
| beowulfey wrote:
| Gender is being used here as "trait arising from genetic sex
| + behavior". It's not the same as the human social construct,
| but it is analogous. It's also not commonly used in biology
| in this way from what I've seen, for what that's worth.
| empthought wrote:
| It's never used in biology in this way. It is political
| activism.
| mandmandam wrote:
| You think using the word 'gender' while describing the
| mating preferences of white-throated sparrows is
| "political activism"? Good grief.
|
| ... But I have to ask: to what end? What political group
| is massively benefiting from this insidious
| ornithological analogy?
| empthought wrote:
| Those aren't genders.
| nicgrev103 wrote:
| Similar to Love Island ;)
| space_oddity wrote:
| There's a lot more going on behind those white throats than meets
| the eye
| pnemonic wrote:
| ah yes the walk down here to this comment was short but scenic
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Huh this is news to me. My field guides all mention the color
| variation but don't mention differing behavior. One guide even
| incorrectly says its based on age (it is worth noting they do
| vary in plumage depending on age, but in a different way).
|
| Another bird that is sort of like how they describe in the
| article is the Ruff. It is a beautiful type of sandpiper where
| males are split into 3 categories with different appearance and
| behavior.
| inshard wrote:
| Reminds me of evolutionary stable strategies in game theory. In
| this case, the payoffs are even for two strategies in repeated
| games. There are also unstable games like this one:
| https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2016/11/26/side-blotched-....
| floxy wrote:
| Anyone know what types of chicks result from tan-striped/tan-
| striped couplings? Are they a mixture of white-striped and tan-
| striped? Or are they all tan-striped? And likewise for white-
| stripe/white-stripe couplings? The article says the single-
| striped couplings are rare in nature, but I'm wondering none-the-
| less.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-15 23:01 UTC)