[norrius]

Can someone explain what prevents birds of the same subtype from mating? The article mentions that the chromosome 2 cannot cross over in meiosis, but I just fail to understand the mechanics of the process and how that leads to disassortativity.

[jojobas]

Having 2 copies of the mutated gene is probably deadly.

They are saying an individual can only mate with a quarter of the population, but it's obviously incorrect, as the pre-mutation birds can mate with both mutated and unmutated opposite sex.

The reason cross-morph pairs are observed more often as the mutated birds are more sexually aggressive and quickly round up unmutated opposite sex.

[nullc]

The article seemed to suggest that non-cross pairs are not observed at all, but they needed more genetic testing to determine if tan/tan never happens.

Even if the tan/tan is still physiologically possible it may be the case that they still won't mate even if there are no white present at all due to required mating signals being missing.

[jojobas]

From a different article:

So are females most strongly attracted to the tough, macho, white-striped males? Actually, no. Lab studies have found that females of either morph prefer the tan-striped males. White-striped females, more pushy than their tan-striped sisters, grab the tan-striped bachelors right away, so these pairs form more quickly than the opposite combination. Males of both morphs tend to prefer the white-striped females, but those females quickly hook up with tan-striped males if they can, so eventually the leftover birds will form pairs consisting of white-striped males and tan-striped females.

https://www.audubon.org/news/the-fascinating-and-complicated...

Granted, the question of homo-zygotic white offspring viability is not even touched.

Edit: yet another article tentatively says the double-white sparrows to exist, but in far lesser number than expected, they suspect some genetic disadvantage.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)...

[nullc]

Thanks! Very interesting!