Hormones in the Middle

摘要

I first became interested in hormones and social behavior while conducting an experiment on birds in the field. My colleagues and I were studying the evolution of male parental care by comparing the reproductive success of two groups of female dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis), those rearing young with the assistance of a male and those forced to rear young alone because we had captured their mates. We reasoned that any difference between the two groups could be attributed to the male's help, giving us a quantitative measure in numbers of offspring of what that help was worth. As it turned out, however, our experiment was not so simple.