Nonspecific imprintability of quail to colors: response to artificial selection.

Eleven generations of bidirectionally selecting quail (C. coturnix japonica) for nonspecific imprintability to blue or red stimuli resulted in unexpectedly slow yet reliable differentiation of "Hi" and "Lo" imprintability lines. Correlated changes were observed in the variances of unconditional color choices in subjects belonging to these genetic lines. Implications of the data for understanding the interrelated expression of gene effects and environment effects in the development of behavior are discussed.