Inheritance of Hearing and Song in Canaries

Pedigree Breeding: We created a backcross pedigree between the Belgian Waterslager (BWS) and Border canary strains (Supplementary Figure 1) using a breeding design similar to one previously used to analyze inheritance of song learning in the German Roller strain (Mundinger 1999). The male and female founder BWS canaries came from Holland and Belgium, respectively, and the Border stock from England; all were purchased from a bird importer (Cresenzi Bird Imports, Bronx NY). The pedigree was founded in 1998 with a cross between a BWS female and a Border male and the reciprocal cross between a Border female and a BWS male. The resulting F1 offspring had a predicted autosomal complement of 50% Border and 50% BWS, while F1 males had one Z chromosome from each strain and F1 females had their father's Z chromosome and their mother's W chromosome. Female F1 offspring from these two reciprocal crosses were then backcrossed to the BWS male from the parental generation. The resulting backcross offspring had an average autosomal complement of 25 % Border and 75 % BWS. Male backcross offspring had either two BWS Z chromosomes, or one Border Z and one BWS Z, depending on the origin of their F1 mothers. Female backcross offspring had a BWS Z chromosome and either a BWS W or a Border W chromosome. For comparison, separate within-strain matings of the BWS founders and the Border founders were established; these pure-strain offspring carry the same