Cyagen Biosciences

On Thanksgiving Day, many of you may gather together with family around a table adorned with a turkey. In a grocery store or on a farm, turkeys are remarkably uniform, but wild turkeys have remarkably diverse appearances and behaviors. One striking example of this is the decorative displays of male (or “tom”) turkeys, which includes iridescent feathers, a brightly colored head and neck, and enlarged beard, caruncles, wattle and snood. These features are used to attract females, but surprisingly many toms don’t mate, and these subordinate males actually look and act different from dominant males. Once dominance is established within a family of toms, subordinate turkeys develop less vivid coloration and smaller wattles, caruncles and snoods. These turkeys help their one dominant brother to attract mates, and serve as bodyguards to fight off other groups of males, but the subordinate toms don’t attempt to mate. The basis for the existence of these two male phenotypes is a f