Genotype x environment (GxE) interactions can reduce the accuracy of a model to predict the performance of an animal and have an undesirable influence if not accounted for when estimating breeding values. Consequently, identification of these GxE is necessary when considering a turkey breeding program. Reranking based on the genetic prediction of turkey egg production, fertility, and hatchabili...

BACKGROUND The Cretaceous vertebrate assemblages of Romania are famous for geographically endemic dwarfed dinosaur taxa. We report the first complete egg clutches of a dwarf lithostrotian titanosaur, from Toteşti, Romania, and its reproductive adaptation to the "island effect". METHODOLOGY/FINDINGS The egg clutches were discovered in sequential sedimentary layers of the Maastrichtian Sânpetru...

ABSTRACT The Charnov–Bull model of differential fitness is often used to explain the evolution and maintenance temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). Most tests focus on morphological proxies fitness, such as size traits, whereas early life physiological traits that are closely related lifetime might provide a framework for generalizing across taxa. One trait strength early-life immune ...

Nezara viridula (L.) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), the southern green stink bug, has body color polymorphisms. N. viridula f. smaragdula is the common green morph, whereas the rare morph N. viridula f. aurantiaca is uniformly orange. Crossing studies were conducted to determine the inheritance of the orange body color trait. Mendelian genetic analysis suggested that orange body color is a simple, ...

an f2 japanese quail population was developed by crossing two strains (wild and white) to map quantitative trait loci (qtl) for performance and carcass traits. a total of 472 f2 birds were reared and slaughtered at 42 days of age. performance and carcass traits were measured on all of the f2 individuals. parental (p0), f1 and f2 individuals were genotyped with 3 microsatellites from quail chrom...

Reproduction is influenced by many external factors. For egg laying of pond snails, one important trigger is the transfer from dirty, oxygen-poor water to clean, oxygen-rich water. This response is due to the combined effects of elevated oxygen level, chemical water composition and clean substrate. Whether this clean-water stimulus (CWS) resembles the natural egg-laying process has remained unt...

The present study was conducted to determine egg production traits and egg quality characteristics in black and brown lines of Japanese quail. A total of 500 quails comprising 400 females and 100 males obtained from two breeding centers were raised according to the standard procedure for Japanese quail. They were grouped in according to their plumage colours. Age at first egg-laying has been re...

Inherited gene transcripts deposited in oocytes direct early embryonic development in all vertebrates, but transcript profiles indicative of embryo developmental competence have not previously been identified. We employed artificial intelligence to model profiles of maternal ovary gene expression and their relationship to egg quality, evaluated as production of viable mid-blastula stage embryos...

Identification of genes determining the expression of economically important traits of plants and animals is a main research focus in agricultural genomics. Most of these traits are characterized by a wide variability of the expression of genes at certain loci called quantitative trait loci (QTL). Characterization of the chromosomal regions carrying QTL can be applied in marker-assisted Selecti...