ArticleFrontiers in zoology2013
Linking melanism to brain development: expression of a melanism-related gene in barn owl feather follicles covaries with sleep ontogeny.
Article in Frontiers in zoology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Ecological and social pressures interfere with homeostatic sleep regulation in the wild.eLife · 2022Article
- Sleep in ostrich chicks (Struthio camelus).Sleep · 2021Article
- Comparative Perspectives that Challenge Brain Warming as the Primary Function of REM Sleep.iScience · 2020Article
- Budgerigars have complex sleep structure similar to that of mammals.PLoS biology · 2020Article
- What Is REM Sleep?Current biology : CB · 2020Review
- Energy Stores, Oxidative Balance, and Sleep in Migratory Garden Warblers (Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2020Article
- Local Aspects of Avian Non-REM and REM Sleep.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Review
- Sleep research goes wild: new methods and approaches to investigate the ecology, evolution and functions of sleep.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Genetic Correlates of Individual Differences in Sleep Behavior of Free-Living Great Tits (Parus major).G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2016Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIntra-specific variation in melanocyte pigmentation, common in the animal kingdom, has caught the eye of naturalists and biologists for centuries. In vertebrates, dark, eumelanin pigmentation is often genetically determined and associated with various behavioral and physiological traits, suggesting that the genes involved in melanism have far reaching pleiotropic effects. The mechanisms linking these traits remain poorly understood, and the potential involvement of developmental processes occurring in the brain early in life has not been investigated. We examined the ontogeny of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a state involved in brain development, in a wild population of barn owls (Tyto alba) exhibiting inter-individual variation in melanism and covarying traits. In addition to sleep, we measured melanistic feather spots and the expression of a gene in the feather follicles implicated in melanism (PCSK2).
resultsAs in mammals, REM sleep declined with age across a period of brain development in owlets. In addition, inter-individual variation in REM sleep around this developmental trajectory was predicted by variation in PCSK2 expression in the feather follicles, with individuals expressing higher levels exhibiting a more precocial pattern characterized by less REM sleep. Finally, PCSK2 expression was positively correlated with feather spotting.
conclusionsWe demonstrate that the pace of brain development, as reflected in age-related changes in REM sleep, covaries with the peripheral activation of the melanocortin system. Given its role in brain development, variation in nestling REM sleep may lead to variation in adult brain organization, and thereby contribute to the behavioral and physiological differences observed between adults expressing different degrees of melanism.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.