precocial
1
9.9
- adjective
- /prɪˈkoʊʃəl/
- Specialized
- In collaboration with Robert P. Freckleton (then at the University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom), we developed a method to test how rates of phenotypic evolution vary between precocial (i.e., independent, self-feeding) and semiprecocial young (i.e., fed by the parents).
- precocial young
Examples
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Less demanding young, such as the precocial chicks of many shorebirds, make it possible for one parent to desert and remate (Thomas and Székely 2005).
Academic text (2006) -
Opposite page: Leaving only footprints, adult titanosaurs move off, while precocial hatchlings venture out of the nests.
Academic text (2002) -
Males care for hatched young for three weeks or longer, brooding them under their wings (the young are precocial and can feed themselves).
Academic text (1995) -
The results were highly consistent with our predictions in showing that evolutionary shifts toward precocial young are likely to have preceded changes toward uniparental care (Figure 4b).
Academic text (2006) -
(b) Directional evolution of shorebird chick development from semiprecocial (fed by parents) to precocial (self-feeding) and of parental care from full (biparental) to reduced (uniparental).
Academic text (2006) -
Thus, it seems that having precocial young opened the possibility for the evolutionary divergence of breeding systems to polygyny and polyandry and to a system with leks, in which females pick partners at specialized male display sites but, once mated, rear the young unaided.
Academic text (2006) -
This "misplaced parental care" hypothesis helps explain why cooperative breeding is three times more likely to evolve in taxa that produce altricial (helpless) young rather than precocial young (those that are soon able to survive on their own).
Academic text (2009) -
In precocial animals, their more mature skins at birth contain a greater proportion of sulfated proteoglycans (keratin sulfate), glycosaminoglycans designed to withstand greater mechanical forces.
Academic text (1995) -
Many species of ducks are precocial, allowing them to swim and forage for food shortly after hatching.
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The precocial chicks of some birds can walk and seek food almost immediately when they are born.
Antonyms
How Independent
Surface Forms
Etymology
Precocial comes from the Latin word praecox, which means 'early' or 'ripening early' and is the same idea behind precocious; imagine a chick that is ready very soon after hatching. That's why precocial young are born more ready and can see and move almost immediately.