Project description:The pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) is raised by commercial farms in most parts of China because of special fleshy flavour. In the study, complete mitochondrial genome of the Mongolia pheasant was sequenced by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as well as the primer walking sequence method. The entire mitochondrial genome of Mongolia pheasant was 16,673 bp in length, gene composition and arrangement conformed to most bird, which contained the typical structure of 22 tRNAs, 2 rRNAs, 13 protein-coding genes and a non-coding region. The phylogenetic tree of 20 Phasianidaes showed that Mongolia pheasant had close relationship to ring-necked pheasant. Our complete mitochondrial genome sequence will be useful phylogenetics, and be available as basic data for the breeding and genetics.
Project description:Maternal hormones in vertebrate eggs can mediate important forms of maternal effects. However, the function of hormone transfer to the eggs is still debated, especially because long-term fitness consequences have been little studied. We investigated the effect of prenatal exposure to physiologically elevated yolk testosterone (T) levels on reproduction of female pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) in captivity. We found that females hatching from T-injected eggs (T-females) had a lower egg-laying rate than controls, and their eggs were more frequently infertile than those laid by control females. There were no effects of prenatal maternal treatment on egg size and yolk T concentration, but eggs carrying a female embryo laid by T-females had smaller yolks than eggs with a male embryo, while there was no sex difference in yolk size among the eggs laid by control females. Progeny sex ratio was unaffected by maternal treatment. These findings suggest that the transfer of high androgen levels to the eggs by the mother is constrained by complex trade-offs between direct effects on her daughters' reproduction and by trans-generational differential consequences on male and female descendants.
