It’s well known that reptiles depend on temperature cues while in the egg to determine a hatchling’s sex.
Now, researchers writing in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution on May 26 say that embryos of many different animal species also rely on acoustic signals in important ways. They call this phenomenon “acoustic developmental programming”.
“Acoustic developmental programming occurs when a sound informs embryos about the environment they’ll encounter postnatally and changes their development to better suit this environment,” said Mylene Mariette (@MyleneMariette) of Deakin University in Australia. [Read more…] about Embryos of many species use sound to prepare for the outside world