FOOD AVOIDANCE BY ADULT HOUSE-FINCHES, CARPODACUS-MEXICANUS, AFFECTS SEED PREFERENCES OF OFFSPRING

In altricial birds, the food habits of young birds may be affected by extended parental contact. To examine this, five nesting pairs of capt ive adult house finches were exposed to hulled oats treated with an av ersive agent, methiocarb. During the nestling and early fledgling stag es, juvenile finches raised by adults that avoided oats received 30-40 times less exposure to hulled oats than did juveniles raised by adult s that ate oats. After they were separated from the adults, the juveni les had no further access to oats or to canary seed, the alternative u ntreated food, until tested individually at 10-12, 20-22, and 35-38 we eks of age. There was no relationship between,the juvenile birds' expo sure to oats in the early nestling stage and their subsequent oat pref erence scores. Birds raised by adults that avoided oats during the lat e nestling and fledgling stages, however, displayed lower oat preferen ce scores than did birds raised by adults that ate oats. Thus, dietary aversion to oats established in adult birds was expressed in the seed preferences of their offspring. (C) 1996 The Association for the Stud y of Animal Behaviour