Zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata
تعريف
The zebra finch is a small Australian finch domesticated roughly a century and a half ago and now kept both as an aviary bird, in about thirty strains and more than forty colour morphs, and as one of biology's principal model organisms. Adults weigh thirteen to fourteen grams and live around five and a half years in captivity. They are granivores that breed readily in cages or aviaries given nest material, incubate thirteen to fourteen days, reach independence near forty-five days and can breed from sixty, with sexual maturity reached by about a hundred and forty-five days. Pairs are socially monogamous and stay bonded even outside the breeding season, although roughly a tenth of eggs in one captive colony were sired outside the pair. The species is the standard system for vocal learning: juveniles copy a tutor's song during a defined sensitive period tied to puberty, and the male's song nuclei are the anatomical basis of the whole field. Practically, most zebra finches a clinician meets come from dense research or hobby colonies, where wellbeing is judged by plumage and fat condition scoring rather than by weight alone.
المؤشّرات الحيوية
- مدّة الحضانة
- 14 – 15 days
- العمر عند أول تكاثر
- 2 – 3 months
- العمر المتوقّع
- ≤ 12 years
- الوزن عند البلوغ
- 0.01 kg
From a published laboratory husbandry protocol, with the start point stated explicitly, which is the qualifier that decides the number: 'Incubation begins when the final egg is laid' - eggs are laid one per day over 2-7 days, so an incubation period measured from the FIRST egg would be several days longer. Both sexes incubate, sometimes simultaneously; the female develops a brood patch. This replaces the withdrawn 13.03-14.37 day band, which was three TREATMENT-GROUP means from a deliberate temperature manipulation (eggs artificially incubated for eight days at 35.9, 37.0 or 37.9 C, then returned to the parents) - the 14.37 ceiling was the sub-optimal cold arm, which the same study linked to lower post-fledging survival.
Both endpoints come from ONE source's account of wild populations, and they are two different statistics, which is why each is named here rather than presented as a measured band: 60 days (about 2 months) is the earliest age at which offspring can breed, and 90 days (about 3 months) is the MEDIAN age of reproduction. The context matters - wild zebra finches have very high mortality (mean annual survivorship of 4% in one population, average lifespan 53-128 days), so most birds get a single breeding opportunity, which pulls the median age of reproduction down. DISAGREEING and deliberately NOT merged: a laboratory husbandry protocol for this species puts breeding 'possible at an age of 4 mo' (Olson et al., Cold Spring Harbor Protocols 2014, citing Austad 2011), so a captive colony should not be expected to breed on the wild timetable. The withdrawn 4.8-month (145-day) ceiling was not a finding at all - 145 days is one of four sampling timepoints in PMC8629242, at which the birds were already sexually mature adults.
MAXIMUM RECORDED AGE, not a typical lifespan. AnAge sample size Large, data quality Acceptable; it separately records a plausible but anecdotal 14.5-year pet. This is a ceiling only: the withdrawn 5.5 years was an unsourced 'captive' figure, and wild zebra finches average far less (published mean lifespan 53-128 days in two wild populations). Do not read 12 as an expectation for either wild or captive birds.
MATURE weight, MEASURED on adults - not a modelled nestling growth asymptote, which is what was withdrawn. Birds were sexually mature captive-bred F8-11 descendants of wild Australian stock, aged 8-46 months. Sexes reported separately, females heavier: males median 11.58 g (1st quartile 10.76, 3rd quartile 12.77), females median 12.47 g (1st quartile 11.48, 3rd quartile 12.99). The stored bounds are the OBSERVED QUARTILE BOUNDS across both sexes (male Q1 to female Q3), deliberately not the two medians - two group medians as a min and a max is the pattern that got the old value withdrawn. Independent agreement for WILD adults, sex-split, from a husbandry guideline citing Zann's monograph: 'It is a small bird-wild adult females weighing on average 12.5 g, whereas males are lighter, averaging 12.2 g' (Proper Care, Husbandry, and Breeding Guidelines for the Zebra Finch, Cold Spring Harbor Protocols 2014, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4574870/). DOMESTICATED colony lines run heavier and sit at or above the ceiling: 'Mean body mass was 13.3 +/- 0.35 g in the control group and 13.2 +/- 0.32 g in the 5 lux ALAN group' (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7503983/, CC BY).
تُعرض المؤشّرات المُوثَّقة فقط. غياب مؤشّر هنا يعني أنه غير مذكور في مرجع موثوق لهذا النوع — لا أنه ناقص من الصفحة.
السلالات — لا يوجد ارتباط
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كل السلالات ←العلامات السريرية — لا يوجد ارتباط
لا علامة سريرية منشورة بعد — وهي أيضاً ما ينقص باحث العلامات.
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