Developmental stages of the Japanese quail

Abstract

Developmental biology research has used various avian species as model organisms for studying morphogenesis, with the chick embryo being used by the majority of groups. The focus on the chick embryo led Hamburger and Hamilton to develop their definitive staging series nearly 60 years ago and this series is still the mainstay of all laboratories working with avian embryos. The focus on the chick embryo has somewhat overshadowed the importance of another avian embryo that has proved to be equally powerful, the Japanese quail. Since the late 1960s, chimeras have been produced using chick and quail embryos and this technique has revolutionized the approach taken to the investigation of the cellular and molecular interactions that occur during development.Reviews of the literature demonstrate that many research groups are using the quail embryo in a number of established and new ways, and this species has become a primary animal model in developmental biology. Some staging of quail has been performed but this has been incomplete and variations in descriptions, stages and incubation timings mean that comparisons with the chick are not always easily made. There appears to be general agreement that, at the early stages of embryogenesis, there is little developmental difference between chick and quail embryos, although the basis for this has not been established experimentally. The accelerated ontogeny of quail embryos at mid to late stages of development means that registration with the chick is lost. We have therefore developed a definitive developmental stage series for Japanese quail so that differences are fully characterized, misconceptions or assumptions are avoided, and the results of comparative studies are not distorted.

Hatching Characteristics and Growth Performance of Eggs with Different Egg Shapes

“…This is attributed to the change in the axial location of the embryo in normal-shaped eggs during the advanced stages of embryonic development (Ainsworth et al, 2010). In chicken eggs, on day 14 of the incubation period, the head of the embryo moves towards the blunt end of the egg and the embryo acquires a position parallel to the egg axis.…”

Heterochronic events in the ontogeny of Columba livia, Coturnix coturnix, and Gallus gallus domesticus

“…Comparative embryonic prehatchling development between altricial and precocial birds has been poorly explored (Yamasaki and Tonosaki, 1988;Köppl et al, 2005;Ainsworth et al, 2009;Olea and Sandoval, 2012;Murray et al, 2013, Almeida et al, 2015 but this scarce information shows that growth rate is critical to characterize the development patterns and provides an excellent opportunity to analyze heterochronic events (Blom and Lilja 2005).…”

Transgenic quail to dynamically image amniote embryogenesis

“…To confirm that Tg(PGK1:H2B-chFP) embryos ubiquitously express H2B-chFP from developmental stages X-11 (Ainsworth et al, 2010;Eyal-Giladi and Kochav, 1976;Hamburger and Hamilton, 1951), we fixed the embryos at various stages, counterstained the embryos with DAPI to label all cell nuclei, and imaged the embryos in 3D (xyz) by confocal and two-photon microscopy. Representative images of whole-mount embryos and high-resolution sections from stages X, 2, 5, 8 and 11 are shown ( Fig.…”