10-08-2007, 03:29 PM
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Bird fertility boosted if sex expected
(gg)
DALLAS (Reuters) - Fertility rates in birds can get alift if the male anticipates that a sexual encounteris just around the corner, researchers from theUniversity of Texas reported on Thursday. The unorthodox study involved 28 male quails, 14female quails, and two chambers: a green one near anoisy room and a white one on an isolated table. The males were put into each of the chambers for abrief period daily over a period of five days. Halfwere given access to a female immediately after theirtime in the green chamber but not the white: for theother half it was the opposite. The male quails therefore came to associate onechamber with the act of copulation. "We can take anything and make it a romantic settingif there is the anticipation of sex," said MichaelDomjan, a psychology professor at the University ofTexas at Austin. "We concluded the experiment by pairing the males withsingle females. One male would go into the romanticchamber and then have access to the female, then onewould go into the non-romantic chamber and then haveaccess to the same female," Domjan, one of the authorsof the study, told Reuters by telephone. Using DNA testing the researchers then tracked thepaternity of the eggs and found that the males whoanticipated the act of copulation fertilized 72percent of the eggs laid by the female quail. The study, published online on Thursday in theSeptember issue of Psychological Science, concludedthat the anticipation of mating appeared to inducethem to produce more offspring. "It shows that psychological factors impact fertilityand that learning has a lot to do with successfulsexual behavior," said Domjan.
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