Skip Navigation

This Article
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Pagel, M.
Right arrow Articles by Pomiankowski, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Pagel, M.
Right arrow Articles by Pomiankowski, A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 1998 International Society for Behavioral Ecology

research-article

Reduced parasitism by retaliatory cuckoos selects for hosts that rear cuckoo nestlings

Mark Pagela,b,, Anders Pape Møllerc and Andrew Pomiankowskid

aDepartment of Zoology, University of Oxford South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK bWissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Wallotstrasse, 19, D-14193 Berlin, Germany cLaboratoire d'Ecologie, Université Pierre et Marie Curie F-75252 Paris Cedex 05, France dDepartment of Biology, University College London 4 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HE, UK

Address correspondence to M. Pagel. E-mail: mark.pagel{at}zoology.ox.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

We present a model to investigate why some bird species rear the nestlings of brood parasites in spite of suffering large reductions in their own immediate fitness. Of particular interest is the case in which hosts rear only the parasite's young, all of their own offspring having been ejected or destroyed by the parasite. We investigate the conditions for the evolution of retaliation by brood parasites against hosts that eject their young, as well as the evolution of nonejection by hosts. Retaliation by cuckoos can evolve, despite potentially benefiting other brood parasites, if rates of ejection by hosts are neither too high nor too low, and if depredated nests are reparasitized at a high rate by the depredating cuckoo. The presence of a retaliatory cuckoo then eases the conditions for the evolution of hosts to accept and rear cuckoo offspring. A key condition favoring the evolution of non-ejection is that nonejectors enjoy lower rates of parasitism in later clutches compared to ejectors. This requires that cuckoos reparasitize the clutches of ejectors at relatively high rates and that nonejectors can rear a clutch of their own following the rearing of a cuckoo nestling. If these conditions are not met, it pays hosts to eject cuckoo nestlings even if the cuckoo retaliates. The model can explain why nonejection is relatively easy to evolve in cases in which the host young are reared alongside those of the cuckoo, such as in cowbirds, and shows how hosts can resist invasion by parasitic cuckoos. The model predicts that retaliatory brood parasites such as the cuckoo have good memory for the location and status of nests in their territory. Hosts of retaliatory cuckoos whose nestlings destroy the host clutch are predicted to have long breeding seasons or the ability to attempt more than one clutch per season. Our model of retaliation may have wider applications to host-parasite relationships, virulence, and immunity.

Key words: birds, cuckoos, evolution, models, parasitism, virulence.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.