Maternal Choice

Maternal nutrition and four-alternative choice.

Two groups of 10 male rats were trained to nose poke for food pellets at four alternatives that provided differing rates of pellet delivery on aperiodic schedules. After a fixed number of pellets had been delivered, 5, 10 or 20 in different conditions of the experiment, a 10-s blackout occurred, and the locations of the differing rates of pellet delivery were randomized for the next component. ...

A History of Caesarean Birth from Maternal Death to Maternal Choice

Rational Choice Theory: An Overview

It seems easy to accept that rationality involves many features that cannot be summarized in terms of some straightforward formula, such as binary consistency.  However, this recognition does not immediately lead to alternative characterizations that might be regarded as satisfactory, even though the inadequacies of the traditional assumptions of rational behavior standard used in economic theo...

Maternal Choice in the UK Should Be Promoted Despite the Current Era of Financial Austerity

The case for promoting maternal choice with regards to location of delivery is clear. The current default position is to give birth in hospital in a consultant-led unit. Yet, despite the ability to choose location, only 5% of women give birth in a midwife-led unit, and 3% at home. For most low risk mothers, perinatal outcomes are generally the same regardless of location, with the exception of ...

Phenotypic and fitness consequences of maternal nest-site choice across multiple early life stages.

Identifying the relative contributions of genetic, maternal, and environmental factors to phenotypic variation is critical for evaluating the evolutionary potential of fitness-related traits. We employed a novel two-step cross-fostering experiment to quantify the relative contributions of clutch (i.e., maternal identity) and maternally chosen nest sites to phenotypic variation during three earl...