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Modeling the cuckoo’s brood parasitic behavior in the presence of egg polymorphism

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Abstract

The common cuckoo Cuculus canorus is a brood parasite that utilizes many host species. These have evolved defense against parasitism to reject cuckoo eggs that look unlike their own and some cuckoos have evolved egg mimicry to counter this defense. Egg phenotype indeed plays a key role for both the cuckoo and its hosts to successfully reproduce. It has been argued that cuckoos should parasitize host nests where egg phenotype matches because this makes parasitism more successful. Details of the cuckoo’s parasitic behavior, however, largely remains unknown if they really parasitize hosts depending on “egg matching”. In this paper, we model a time sequence of parasitic events in which a cuckoo finds host nests and decides to parasitize them or not in the presence of egg polymorphism. We evaluate which strategy is optimal: (1) opportunistic parasitism where cuckoos parasitize hosts irrespective of the phenotype, or (2) non-opportunistic parasitism where cuckoos parasitize hosts where egg phenotype matches. The analysis showed that either of the two strategies can be optimal. Factors not considered in the model, e.g., ecological and evolutionary changes both in the cuckoo and the host side, are discussed to explain apparent contrasts observed in some cuckoo–host interactions.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 31071938, 31272328 and 31472013 to WL, and 31260514 to CY), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0761) and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 23570026 to FT. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Wei Liang & Canchao Yang

  2. Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Nara Women’s University, Kita-Uoya Nishimachi, Nara, 630-8506, Japan

    Fugo Takasu

Authors
  1. Wei Liang
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  2. Canchao Yang
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  3. Fugo Takasu
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Correspondence to Fugo Takasu.

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Appendix S1 Derivation of the result for general case (DOCX 63 kb)

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Liang, W., Yang, C. & Takasu, F. Modeling the cuckoo’s brood parasitic behavior in the presence of egg polymorphism. J Ethol 34, 127–132 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-015-0455-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-015-0455-3

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