Hens (Gallus gallus domesticus) with larger spurs have higher faecal testosterone levels; evidence of female to male - like phenotype
1
Ballyrichard House, Arklow, Co. Wicklow, Ireland
2
School of Agriculture, Food Science & Veterinary Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
3
School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
4
Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Science, King's College London, University of London, London, United Kingdom
5
Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Donders Institute, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Agricultural Science, Animal Behavior, Zoology
- Keywords
- domestic fowl, spurs, sex change, masculinisation, testosterone
- Copyright
- © 2018 Kent et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Hens (Gallus gallus domesticus) with larger spurs have higher faecal testosterone levels; evidence of female to male - like phenotype. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26994v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26994v1
Abstract
Spurs are a testosterone-dependent secondary sexual characteristic of male chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) and are used as ‘weapons’ in intra-sexual fighting. While predominantly a male feature, they are also found in a small number of females. Here we show that faecal testosterone metabolites of adult hens (i.e. females) with large spurs are significantly greater than those of females with smaller spurs. The presence of spurs in hens together with elevated testosterone levels are indicative of a masculinisation process that may increase with age. This is of particular interest in the study of female to male sex-reversal in fowl.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.