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Chick Recognition and Acceptance: a Weakness in Magpies Exploited by the Parasitic Great Spotted Cuckoo by Manuel Soler; Juan Gabriel Martinez; Juan Josf Soler; Anders Pape Møller is a Agricultural and Biological Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Chick Recognition and Acceptance: a Weakness in Magpies Exploited by the Parasitic Great Spotted Cuckoo about?

Hosts of brood parasites have evolved the ability to discriminate non-mimetic and even mimetic eggs, but not non-mimetic chicks. Here we demonstrate that the great spotted cuckoo Clarnator glandarius does not provide its magpie Pica pica host with a supernormal stimulus that helps to avoid recognition, because single cuckoo chicks introduced into otherwise unparasitized magpie nests are not fed at a higher frequency than single magpie chicks introduced to parasitized magpie nests. Another series of experiments demonstrated that magpies have the ability to discriminate cuckoo chicks, mainly when these are introduced at the end of the nestling period, and especially when the cuckoo chick together with a magpie chick is presented to adult magpies outside the nest. This supports the idea that cuckoos exploit the obligatory reaction of magpies to feed all young that have been hatched in their nests and whose "signatures" they have learnt. Furthermore, the experimental cuckoo chicks in parasitized magpie nests were more likely to be accepted than they were in non-parasitized nests. This supports the hypothesis that magpies may learn to recognise their own nestlings as those present in th

Who reads Chick Recognition and Acceptance: a Weakness in Magpies Exploited by the Parasitic Great Spotted Cuckoo?

Author

Manuel Soler; Juan Gabriel Martinez; Juan Josf Soler; Anders Pape Møller

Publisher

Springer; Springer-Verlag; Springer Verlag; Springer Science and Business Media LLC; Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Inc. (ISSN 0340-5443)

Published

1995

Language

EN

Field

Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Life Sciences)