The evolution of egg rejection by cuckoo hosts in Australia and Europe

N.E. Langmore, R.M. Kilner, S.H.M. Butchart, G. Maurer, N.B. Davies, A. Cockburn, N.A. Macgregor, A. Peters, M.J.L. Magrath and D.K. Dowling

Behavioral Ecology, 2005, vol. 16, issue 4, 686-692

Abstract: Exploitation of hosts by brood parasitic cuckoos is expected to stimulate a coevolutionary arms race of adaptations and counteradaptations. However, some hosts have not evolved defenses against parasitism. One hypothesis to explain a lack of host defenses is that the life-history strategies of some hosts reduce the cost of parasitism to the extent that accepting parasitic eggs in the nest is evolutionarily stable. Under this hypothesis, it pays hosts to accept cuckoo eggs if (1) the energetic cost of raising the cuckoo is low, (2) there is time to renest, and (3) clutch size is small. We parasitized the nests of host and nonhost species with nonmimetic model eggs to test whether the evolution of egg recognition by cuckoo hosts could be explained by life-history variables of the host. The most significant factor explaining rates of rejection of model eggs was whether or not a species was a cuckoo host, with hosts rejecting model eggs at a higher rate than nonhosts. Egg-rejection rates were also explained by visibility within the nest and by cuckoo mass. We found little support for the life-history model of egg rejection. Our results suggest that parasitism is always sufficiently costly to select for host defenses and that the evolution of defenses may be limited by proximate constraints such as visibility within the nest. Copyright 2005.

Keywords: brood parasitism; coevolution; cowbirds; cuckoos; life-history strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/ari041 (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:16:y:2005:i:4:p:686-692

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 ().