A game theoretical approach to conspecific brood parasitism

M. Broom and G. D. Ruxton

Behavioral Ecology, 2002, vol. 13, issue 3, 321-327

Abstract: We constructed a game theoretical model to predict optimal patterns of egg laying in systems where individuals lay in the nests of others as well as in their own nests. We show that decreasing the effect of position within an egg-laying sequence on the worth of an egg should lead to reduced parasitism. Indeed, parasitism can only flourish if the worth of an egg to its biological parent declines with the total number of eggs laid in that nest. Further, we found that increasing the intrinsic costs of egg production should lead to an increased propensity for conspecific brood parasitism. The model also predicts that variation in hosts' ability to reject parasitic eggs has little effect on parasitism until this ability is well developed. Copyright 2002.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/ (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:13:y:2002:i:3:p:321-327

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().