Maternal styles in a precocial bird

Care provided by females of many mammal species varies naturally between individuals; these differences in turn influence the phenotypic development of their offspring. When individual maternal behavioural traits are consistent over a number of breeding periods, maternal styles can be defined. These styles have been studied in a large range of mammalian species. Nevertheless, mammals rarely offer the possibility to dissociate mothers' behavioural influence from their genetic influence or their physiological influence via lactation. Here, we provide, for the first time, evidence of the existence of a precocial bird species' maternal styles. By using an adoption procedure we evaluated how maternal style affected the behaviour of Japanese quail, Coturnix coturnix japonica, chicks, via exclusively nongenomic mechanisms. As well as evidence for the existence of maternal styles in this species, we also found correlations between females' temperaments, maternal styles and their fostered chicks' development. Our findings indicate that maternal styles are key features that help understand nongenomic transmission of behavioural characteristics whose vectors have remained poorly understood. (C) 2013 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.