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Behavioral Ecology Vol. 13 No. 3: 321-327
© 2002 International Society for Behavioral Ecology

A game theoretical approach to conspecific brood parasitism

M. Brooma and G. D. Ruxtonb

a Centre for Statistics and Stochastic Modelling, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK b Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

Address correspondence to G.D. Ruxton, Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow, University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK. E-mail: g.ruxton{at}bio.gla.ac.uk . M. Broom is also a member of the Centre for the Study of Evolution at the University of Sussex.

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.

Key words: conspecific brood parasitism, egg dumping, host—parasite systems, intraspecific parasitism, parental care.


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