Affiliation:
1. Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States of America
2. Museum of Vertebrates, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States of America
Abstract
For adult Common Ground Doves from Sinaloa we demonstrate that the primaries are a single molt series, which sometimes feature two (in one case three) waves of feather replacement. Such stepwise primary replacement is found in many large birds but, at 40 g, this dove is much the smallest species reported to have multiple waves of replacement proceeding through its primaries simultaneously. Pre-breeding juvenile Common Ground Doves never feature two waves of primary replacement. Juveniles usually have more than two adjacent feathers growing simultaneously and replace their primaries in about 100 days. In contrast adults, which extensively overlap molt and breeding, usually grow just a single primary at a time, and require at least 145 days to replace their primaries. Molt arrests are thought to drive the generation of new waves of primary replacement in a diversity of large birds. For adult Common Ground Doves, we found molt arrests to be strongly associated with active crop glands, suggesting that the demands of parental care cause arrests in primary replacement in this dove. For those adults with two primary molt waves, initiation of an inner wave was most frequently observed once the outer wave had reached P10. Thus, unlike reports for large birds, Common Ground Doves usually suppress the initiation of a new wave of molt starting at P1 when the preceding wave arrests before reaching the distal primaries. This assures that relatively fresh inner primaries are not replaced redundantly, overcoming a serious flaw in stepwise molting in large birds (Rohwer, 1999).
Funder
Hugh S. Ferguson
Nuttall Ornithological Club
USFWS
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine,General Neuroscience
Cited by
2 articles.
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