Cuckoos use host egg number to choose host nests for parasitism

Are Cuckoos Maximizing Egg Mimicry by Selecting Host Individuals with Better Matching Egg Phenotypes?

BACKGROUND Avian brood parasites and their hosts are involved in complex offence-defense coevolutionary arms races. The most common pair of reciprocal adaptations in these systems is egg discrimination by hosts and egg mimicry by parasites. As mimicry improves, more advanced host adaptations evolve such as decreased intra- and increased interclutch variation in egg appearance to facilitate dete...

Brood parasites lay eggs matching the appearance of host clutches.

Interspecific brood parasitism represents a prime example of the coevolutionary arms race where each party has evolved strategies in response to the other. Here, we investigated whether common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) actively select nests within a host population to match the egg appearance of a particular host clutch. To achieve this goal, we quantified the degree of egg matching using the a...

Visual mimicry of host nestlings by cuckoos.

Coevolution between antagonistic species has produced instances of exquisite mimicry. Among brood-parasitic cuckoos, host defences have driven the evolution of mimetic eggs, but the evolutionary arms race was believed to be constrained from progressing to the chick stage, with cuckoo nestlings generally looking unlike host young. However, recent studies on bronze-cuckoos have confounded theoret...

Host life history responses to parasitism.

Parasites and their infections can adversely effect a host's growth, reproduction and survival. These effects are often not immediate, but increase with time since infection. A general prediction from evolutionary biology is that hosts suffering from this type of infection should preferentially allocate resources towards reproduction, even if this is at the expense of their growth and survival....

Shiny cowbirds synchronize parasitism with host laying and puncture host eggs according to host characteristics