Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Water in the Avian Egg Overall Budget of Incubation

Water in the Avian Egg Overall Budget of Incubation Abstract The loss of mass in eggs during incubation was examined and evidence is presented to show that this is essentially due to loss of water. The mean fraction of water lost by diffusion throughout incubation is 0.150 ± 0.025 S D per gram of egg and 0.162 ± 0.026 S D per gram of egg content for 81 species. The water fraction of fresh eggs and of hatching eggs was examined in 32 species divided according to maturity at hatching, and found to be very similar within each category (83% in altricial 83% in semi-altricial 78% in semi-precocial 72% in precocial eggs). The 11% difference between the altricial and precocial categories is statistically significant. During incubation, dry matter is metabolized increasing the water fraction which is further increased by metabolic water production. Hence, water loss during incubation is mandatory if the relative water content of an egg at the end of incubation is to remain essentially the same as at the beginning. Equations are developed which allow one to estimate the difference between diffusive water loss and the total water loss in altricial and piecocial eggs caused by additional water loss during pipping and hatching. This content is only available as a PDF. Author notes 1From the Symposium on Physiology of the Avian Egg presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Zoologists 27–30 December 1979 at Tampa Florida. © 1980 by the American Society of Zoologists http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Integrative and Comparative Biology Oxford University Press

Water in the Avian Egg Overall Budget of Incubation

Download PDF
12 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/oxford-university-press/water-in-the-avian-egg-overall-budget-of-incubation-NS26AYtIFt

References (17)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© 1980 by the American Society of Zoologists
ISSN
1540-7063
eISSN
1557-7023
DOI
10.1093/icb/20.2.373
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract The loss of mass in eggs during incubation was examined and evidence is presented to show that this is essentially due to loss of water. The mean fraction of water lost by diffusion throughout incubation is 0.150 ± 0.025 S D per gram of egg and 0.162 ± 0.026 S D per gram of egg content for 81 species. The water fraction of fresh eggs and of hatching eggs was examined in 32 species divided according to maturity at hatching, and found to be very similar within each category (83% in altricial 83% in semi-altricial 78% in semi-precocial 72% in precocial eggs). The 11% difference between the altricial and precocial categories is statistically significant. During incubation, dry matter is metabolized increasing the water fraction which is further increased by metabolic water production. Hence, water loss during incubation is mandatory if the relative water content of an egg at the end of incubation is to remain essentially the same as at the beginning. Equations are developed which allow one to estimate the difference between diffusive water loss and the total water loss in altricial and piecocial eggs caused by additional water loss during pipping and hatching. This content is only available as a PDF. Author notes 1From the Symposium on Physiology of the Avian Egg presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Zoologists 27–30 December 1979 at Tampa Florida. © 1980 by the American Society of Zoologists

Journal

Integrative and Comparative Biology – Oxford University Press

Published: May 1, 1980

There are no references for this article.