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. 2020 Jan;16(1):20190763.
doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0763. Epub 2020 Jan 8.

Unhatched eggs represent the invisible fraction in two wild bird populations

Nicola Hemmings  1 , Simon Evans  2   3
Affiliations

Unhatched eggs represent the invisible fraction in two wild bird populations

Nicola Hemmings et al. Biol Lett. 2020 Jan.

Abstract

Prenatal mortality is typically overlooked in population studies, which biases evolutionary inference by confounding selection and inheritance. Birds represent an opportunity to include this 'invisible fraction' if each egg contains a zygote, but whether hatching failure is caused by fertilization failure versus prenatal mortality is largely unknown. We quantified fertilization failure rates in two bird species that are popular systems for studying evolutionary dynamics and found that overwhelming majorities (99.9%) of laid eggs were fertilized. These systems thus present opportunities to eliminate the invisible fraction from life-history data.

Keywords: fertility; hatching failure; lifetime reproductive success; missing fraction; prenatal mortality.

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Conflict of interest statement

We declare we have no competing interests.

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