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Nestling recognition in red-rumped and barn swallows

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Abstract

Nestling recognition and rejection is a rare defense strategy against avian brood parasitism that was previously thought to be too costly to evolve. Recently, several examples of nestling recognition and rejection by fosterers have been reported. Here, we tested for chick recognition ability in red-rumped swallows (Hirundo daurica), which build closed nests and do not discriminate against foreign eggs, by using cross-fostering experiments while controlling for responses to intraspecific and interspecific parasitism in closely related swallow species. We show that red-rumped swallows do not discriminate against conspecific or barn swallow (H. rustica) nestlings, but eject or reject cuckoo nestlings cross-fostered in red-rumped swallow nests by starving the introduced chicks to death. Assuming that the behavior of red-rumped swallows evolved in response to cuckoo parasitism, this study represents novel empirical evidence showing that chick discrimination evolved when brood parasites have completely evaded host defenses at the egg stage. The evolution of such recognition ability may be explained as a defense against avian brood parasitism by small-sized cuckoos or a pre-adaptation to specific communication between host parents and offspring. Our results are consistent with the “rarer enemy” hypothesis predicting that nestling discrimination should evolve only in hosts that accept all naturally laid parasite eggs and thus do not decrease effective parasitism rate at the nestling stage. In contrast, the findings were inconsistent with a number of alternative hypotheses.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prof. Manuel Soler, Theo C. M. Bakker and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments that greatly improved this manuscript. We are grateful to Wenfeng Wang and Jianhua Ma from Zhalong National Nature Reserve for the help and cooperation, and to Qiuli Huang, Shanshan Li and Yungao Hu for their assistance with fieldwork. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31260514 to CY, 31272328 and 31472013 to WL), and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0761) to CY.

Ethical standard

The experiments comply with the current laws of China where they were performed.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, 571158, China

    Canchao Yang, Longwu Wang, Min Chen & Wei Liang

  2. College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Longwu Wang

  3. Laboratoire d’Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, CNRS UMR 8079, Université Paris-Sud, Bâtiment 362, F-91405, Orsay Cedex, France

    Anders P. Møller

Authors
  1. Canchao Yang
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  2. Longwu Wang
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  3. Min Chen
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  4. Wei Liang
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  5. Anders P. Møller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei Liang.

Additional information

Communicated by M. Soler

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Video S1

Ejection of live cuckoo chick by red-rumped swallow parents. (MP4 1314 kb)

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Yang, C., Wang, L., Chen, M. et al. Nestling recognition in red-rumped and barn swallows. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 69, 1821–1826 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1994-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1994-x

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