Egg laying behavior of common cuckoos (&lt;i&gt;Cuculus canorus&lt;/i&gt;): Data based on field video-recordings

Wang, Long-Wu; Guo, Zhaoyang; He, Gangbin; Zhang, Yuhan; Liang, Wei

doi:10.24272/j.issn.2095-8137.2020.021

Cited by 19 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Habitats were primarily reed swamps with several small villages (Yang et al 2017;Wang et al 2020b). The common cuckoo is the main parasitic cuckoo in this study area, and the Oriental reed warbler is its predominant host with a high parasitism rate ranging from 34.3-65.5% among years (Yang et al 2017), cuckoos often remove one or two eggs before they parasitize the host nest (Wang et al 2020a). Furthermore, the appearance of cuckoo eggs resembled the eggs of their hosts well (Yang et al 2015;Li et al 2016a).…”

Section: Study Site and Study Speciesmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Here, we developed a novel eld experimental method to test whether nest-size manipulation affects parasite nest preference when there are su ciently many available host nests. The common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is the most common brood parasite using the Oriental reed warbler as its major host in our study area (Yang et al 2016a(Yang et al , 2017Wang et al 2020a). Different types of arti cial experimental nests can be categorized as large, medium or small size, and we divided these nests into two groups (nest dyads and triads) to test our hypotheses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nest Size Matters: Common Cuckoos Prefer to Parasitize Larger Nests of Oriental Reed Warblers

Wang

Yang

et al. 2021

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BackgroundAvian brood parasites leave parental care of their offspring to foster parents. Theory predicts that parasites should select for large host nests when they have sufficient available host nests at a given time. We developed an empirical experimental design to address this hypothesis by studying nest choice of common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) among nests of its Oriental reed warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) hosts.ResultsWe presented two groups of experimental nests: 1) nest dyads comprise one large and one small artificial nest from reed leaves, and 2) nest triads tied together use the modified old own warbler nests including enlarged, reduced and medium sized nests to elicit parasitism by common cuckoos. We predicted that cuckoos prefer larger nests over medium sized ones, and over the smallest nest. Our experimental findings show that common cuckoo females generally prefer large nests over medium or small sized nests. Furthermore, experiments showed that cuckoo parasitism was significantly more common than in previous studies of the same warbler population.ConclusionsOur results implying that larger, taller and more exposed host nests effectively increased the probability of cuckoo parasitism.

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Section: Study Site and Study Speciesmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nest Size Matters: Common Cuckoos Prefer to Parasitize Larger Nests of Oriental Reed Warblers

Wang

Yang

et al. 2021

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“…The calls were divided into two categories: calls generated before 12:00 and after 12:00. This division is based on the egg laying time by Common Cuckoos: 90% of egg laying occurred from 12:00 to 20:00 (Seel, 1973;Wang et al, 2020). As female Common Cuckoos give calls after parasitizing a host's clutch to divert host attention away from the clutch (York and Davies, 2017), we assumed that calls generated in the afternoon were mainly for interspecific communication (i.e., misdirect host defenses), and calls generated before the afternoon were for intraspecific communication (e.g., attract males and deter territorial rivals).…”

Section: Data Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theoretical models suggest that both participants are locked in an arms race, and the outcomes depend on a series of strategies shaped by coevolution (Takasu, 1998(Takasu, , 2003Soler, 2014). Common cuckoos have evolved numerous strategies to increase parasitism success, such as laying mimetic eggs (Honza et al, 2014;Yang et al, 2016Yang et al, , 2017, adjusting the timing of egg laying (Seel, 1973;Johnsgard, 1997;Wang et al, 2020) and mimicking hawk morphology (Welbergen and Davies, 2011;Gluckman and Mundy, 2013). Host species have also evolved various strategies to reduce the risk of parasitism, including the ability to discriminate cuckoo eggs (Lang et al, 2014), mobbing behavior (Ma et al, 2018), and unique alarm calls when cuckoos are in the vicinity of host nests (Yu et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the Interspecific Function of Female Common Cuckoo “Bubbling” Call

et al. 2021

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Female common cuckoo (Cuculus canorous) predator-like “bubbling” calls distract host parental attention and reduce the egg rejection rate. Such “bubbling” calls are also frequently used to attract males and deter territorial rivals in intraspecies contact, and these calls are an ancestral character in many cuckoo species. Although hosts have had sufficient time to become familiar with this call and evolve anti-parasitic strategies, why are the hosts fooled by this “bubbling” call? We propose two hypotheses. The first hypothesis proposes that call variation reduces the opportunity for host species to correctly assess cuckoo tricks. In contrast, the second hypothesis proposes that the cost of behavior may prevent the antiparasitic strategy from evolving. In the study, we tested the prerequisites of these hypotheses, by investigating whether cuckoo calls vary during the day and testing whether the predator-like calls suppress bird activities. Based on field recordings from three different areas, we found high overlap in the calls generated during different periods. Oriental great reed warblers (Acrocephalus orientalis), a host species, did not show different responses toward the playback of female common cuckoo calls generated before noon or afternoon. Based on bird count data, we found that predator-like call playback is insufficient for suppressing bird activities. Therefore, none of the prerequisites were supported by our field data. We discuss the potential reasons for our findings and hope to inspire more research examining female cuckoo vocalizations.

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“…An adaptive parasite has to choose the right time to quickly lay its eggs and then escape the crime scene, avoiding an attack from the host or reducing the suspicion and detection of the eggs by the host [6][7][8]. In addition to laying eggs in such a limited time (3-10 s) [7,8], the parasite usually removes one or two eggs from the host's nest [9][10][11].…”

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confidence: 99%

Common cuckoo females remove more conspicuous eggs during parasitism

et al. 2021

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Avian obligate brood parasites gain an advantage by removing the eggs of the cuckoos who have already visited the nest, which can increase the chances of survival for their offspring. Conversely, to prevent their eggs from being picked up by the next parasitic cuckoo, they need to take some precautions. Egg mimicry and egg crypsis are two alternative strategies to prevent the parasitized egg from being picked up by another parasitic cuckoo. Here, we tested whether the egg crypsis hypothesis has a preventative effect when common cuckoos ( Cuculus canorus ) parasitize their Oriental reed warbler ( Acrocephalus orientalis ) hosts. We designed two experimental groups with different crypsis effects to induce common cuckoos to lay eggs and observed whether the cuckoos selectively picked up the experimental eggs with low crypsis levels in the process of parasitism. Our results supported the egg crypsis hypothesis; the observed cuckoos significantly preferred to select the more obvious white model eggs. This shows that even in an open nest, eggs that are adequately hidden can also be protected from being picked up by cuckoo females during parasitism so as to increase the survival chance of their own parasitic eggs.

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Egg laying behavior of common cuckoos (<i>Cuculus canorus</i>): Data based on field video-recordings

Cited by 19 publications

References 8 publications

Nest Size Matters: Common Cuckoos Prefer to Parasitize Larger Nests of Oriental Reed Warblers

Nest Size Matters: Common Cuckoos Prefer to Parasitize Larger Nests of Oriental Reed Warblers

Testing the Interspecific Function of Female Common Cuckoo “Bubbling” Call

Common cuckoo females remove more conspicuous eggs during parasitism

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