Effects of maternal experience on fearfulness and maternal behaviour in a precocial bird

Abstract

Brood care can improve with experience, and experience under natural conditions increases with age. We aimed to evaluate the relative effect of experience by comparing experienced and inexperienced females of the same age under controlled conditions. Using 18 experienced (XP) and 22 inexperienced (NXP) female Japanese quail, Coturnix coturnix japonica. of the same age, we monitored maternal behaviour towards foster chicks. We evaluated the social and emotional reactivity of these females before the breeding period and of the fostered chicks after separation from their mothers. Thus, we determined both how maternal experience affects adult females' nonmaternal behaviour and how potential differences in their maternal behaviour affect chicks' behavioural development. We found that although previous breeding experience per se did not influence either their general fearfulness or their sociality, it did influence the way females coped with novelty. Although most of the maternal care variables did not differ significantly between XP and NXP females, we found several differences, mainly concerning first-time female breeders' more abusive behaviour during the first few days of the breeding period. We suggest that these differences in care are related more to inexperienced females' higher neophobia than to an improvement in the quality of care with experience. In tests, chicks showed differences similar to those of their mothers: chicks brooded by inexperienced females reacted more to novelty than chicks brooded by experienced females. We consider this result to be a case of nongenomic maternal transmission.