caa a22 4500 477091385 CHVBK 20180405111516.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170330e19960301xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/BF01241785 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/BF01241785 Low heritability in morphological characters of Tengmalm's owls: The role of cyclic food and laying date? [Elektronische Daten] [Harri Hakkarainen, Erkki Korpimäki, Jussi Ryssy, Sten Vikström] Summary: In parent—offspring regressions, high heritability estimates of characters may simply be due to common environment: the resemblance between the living conditions of parents and their offspring in species showing restricted natal dispersal. In vole-eating Tengmalm's owls (Aegolius funereus), the natal dispersal and breeding dispersal of adult females are wide (up to > 1000 km and > 500 km, respectively), whereas adult males are resident. We found that body measurements of 183 recruits born in western Finland were independent of parental age and vole abundance in the birth year. Early-laid eggs produced longer winged recruits than late-laid eggs. The wing lengths of the daughters showed a significant positive regression on the wing length of their mothers, but the removal of the maternal effect via laying date lowered this relationship. The development time of offspring to the first autumn might also be crucial for morphological characters of females in their later life. Significant regressions were not found between the wing length of the son and his father. The mother—daughter regression was small for laying date, but positive (p = 0.08) for clutch size. These results suggest low heritability in breeding and morphological characters of owls and this low heritability may enable plastic adjustment to optimize fitness at any stage in a fluctuating environment. Nonadditive genetic variance also creates variation between offspring characters that are not genetically correlated with the parents and may explain these low heritability estimates. Chapman & Hall, 1996 owl nationallicence 3-4 year vole cycle nationallicence heritability nationallicence body size nationallicence clutch size nationallicence Hakkarainen Harri Laboratory of Ecological Zoology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20500, Turku, Finland aut Korpimäki Erkki Laboratory of Ecological Zoology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20500, Turku, Finland aut Ryssy Jussi Tikkakuja 15, FIN-63700, Ähtäri, Finland aut Vikström Sten Borgintie 31, FIN-67100, Kokkola, Finland aut Evolutionary Ecology Kluwer Academic Publishers 10/2(1996-03-01), 207-219 0269-7653 10:2<207 1996 10 10682 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01241785 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01241785 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Hakkarainen Harri Laboratory of Ecological Zoology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20500, Turku, Finland aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Korpimäki Erkki Laboratory of Ecological Zoology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20500, Turku, Finland aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Ryssy Jussi Tikkakuja 15, FIN-63700, Ähtäri, Finland aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Vikström Sten Borgintie 31, FIN-67100, Kokkola, Finland aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Evolutionary Ecology Kluwer Academic Publishers 10/2(1996-03-01), 207-219 0269-7653 10:2<207 1996 10 10682 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer