Keeping eggs warm: thermal and developmental advantages for parasitic cuckoos of laying unusually thick-shelled eggs

The Science of Nature volume 105, Article number: 10 (2018) Cite this article

Abstract

Obligate brood parasites have evolved unusually thick-shelled eggs, which are hypothesized to possess a variety of functions such as resistance to puncture ejection by their hosts. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that obligate brood parasites lay unusually thick-shelled eggs to retain more heat for the developing embryo and thus contribute to early hatching of parasite eggs. By doing so, we used an infrared thermal imaging system as a non-invasive method to quantify the temperature of eggshells of common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) and their Oriental reed warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) hosts in an experiment that artificially altered the duration of incubation. Our results showed that cuckoo eggshells had higher temperature than host eggs during incubation, but also less fluctuations in temperature during incubation disturbance. Therefore, there was a thermal and hence a developmental advantage for brood parasitic cuckoos of laying thick-shelled eggs, providing another possible explanation for the unusually thick-shelled eggs of obligate brood parasites and earlier hatching of cuckoo eggs compared to those of the host.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Sven Thatje and two reviewers for their helpful comments. We thank Wenfeng Wang and Jianhua Ma from Zhalong National Nature Reserve, and Min Chen and Yungao Hu for their assistance with fieldwork, and the help and cooperation from Zhalong National Nature Reserve, Heilongjiang, China.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31672303 to CY, 31660617 to LW, 31472013, and 31772453 to WL), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0761 to CY), and the Initial Fund Key Laboratories of Guizhou Province (grant No. 2011-4005) to LW.

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Affiliations

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

    Canchao Yang, Qiuli Huang & Wei Liang

  2. Key Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Development Regulation, School of Life Sciences, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550001, China

    Longwu Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100101, China

    Wei-Guo Du

  4. Ecologie Systématique Evolution, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91400, Orsay, France

    Anders Pape Møller

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  1. Canchao Yang
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  2. Qiuli Huang
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  3. Longwu Wang
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  4. Wei-Guo Du
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  5. Wei Liang
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  6. Anders Pape Møller
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Correspondence to Wei Liang.

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Ethical approval

The experiments comply with the current laws of China, where they were performed. Fieldwork was carried out under the permission from Zhalong National Nature Reserves, China. Experimental procedures were in agreement with the Animal Research Ethics Committee of Hainan Provincial Education Centre for Ecology and Environment, Hainan Normal University (permit no. HNECEE-2012-003).

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Communicated by: Alexandre Roulin

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Yang, C., Huang, Q., Wang, L. et al. Keeping eggs warm: thermal and developmental advantages for parasitic cuckoos of laying unusually thick-shelled eggs. Sci Nat 105, 10 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-017-1532-y

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Keywords

  • Acrocephalus orientalis
  • Cuculus canorus
  • Eggshell thickness
  • Incubation interval
  • Infrared thermal imaging