Same-Sex Parents in Albatross Colony

[n2doc]

By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: June 3, 2008
Cooperative breeding, in which an animal assists in caring for offspring that are not its own, is often found in nature. But researchers in Hawaii have uncovered a case that is not so common, involving long-term pairs of unrelated birds of the same sex.

Lindsay C. Young of the University of Hawaii and colleagues studied a colony of Laysan albatrosses on Oahu from 2004 to 2007. These birds are monogamous, and both parents participate in raising a single hatchling.

The researchers conducted genetic tests and monitored the pairs’ reproductive success. They report in Biology Letters that nearly one-third of the 125 pairs consisted of two unrelated females, and half of these stayed together for the duration of the study.

The researchers note that for female-female pairing like this to occur, usually there has to be a surplus of females in the population. That is the case for the Oahu colony, which is young and has been growing by immigration, with most of the newcomers being female. For same-sex pairing to persist, the researchers say, both females should have opportunities to reproduce. They found evidence for that: for some pairs that produced chicks in more than one year of the study, at least one was from each female.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03obalba.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[XemaSab]

1. Oh noes!

Teh ghey has infected the poor albatrosses!

It's probably from foraging off the coast of California! :o

[damntexdem]

2. And they manage to do all that even with each other ...

around each others' necks.