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This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Backyard and Beyond
Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world. "The place to observe nature is where you are."—John Burroughs
This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Backyard and Beyond 
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Another thing I find interesting about White-throated Sparrows is when they pair up to breed it is mostly one of each morph with gender in either direction. That is, either morph breeds with the opposite morph and gender, yet the result is some of both morphs and, I presume, genders. This doesn’t happen with most animals. When light morph humans reproduce with dark morph humans the result is generally a blended beige morph human with diverse characteristics from both parents.
I just caught the “four genders” statement. I am only familiar with two. Can you enlighten me?
Check out the linked article https://www.molecularecologist.com/2016/02/10/supergenes-and-sparrows-with-four-sexes/ which also links to the original paper.
Thanks. I read it, but still don’t get it. Does it mean the average WT Sparrow can mate with a normal or a supergene version of the opposite sex and color morph. If so, does the bird know which it is mating with? What does an inverted region mean or do? This is way above my pay grade. stillmonly comprehend one way to put two kinds of plumbing together to result in offspring. That there is a color morph preference seems to be irrelevant. or, is same morph copulation infertile?