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Host nest defense against a color-dimorphic brood parasite: great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) versus common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus)

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Abstract

We tested great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) discrimination against two common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) female color morphs (gray and rufous) in two areas with different parasitism rates and proportions of the two morphs. Hosts recognized the two cuckoo morphs from a control, the feral pigeon (Columba livia), at Apaj, Hungary (where brood parasitism was heavy), whereas no significant differences among the models were recorded at Lužice, Czech Republic (where the parasitism rate was moderate). At Apaj, the hosts discriminated the rufous morph (which is slightly predominant there) better than the gray morph from the control. Between-site comparison (after controlling for background aggression) revealed that great reed warblers were more aggressive towards the rufous morph at Apaj than at Lužice, whereas their responses to the gray morph did not differ, corresponding with much higher between-site difference in the relative abundance of the rufous morph. Our results suggest that both local parasitism pressure and relative abundance of two female color morphs of a brood parasite may significantly influence host nest defenses.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Michael I. Cherry and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and for improving our English. Csaba Moskát helped us during fieldwork in Hungary. The editors kindly polished the German summary. The research was financially supported by a grant from the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (No. A6093203 to MH). Our experiments were carried out in accordance with the current laws and ethical guidelines in the Czech Republic and Hungary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Květná 8, 603 65, Brno, Czech Republic

    Marcel Honza, Václav Šicha & Petr Procházka

  2. Department of Zoology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University in Brno, Kotlářská 2, 611 37, Brno, Czech Republic

    Václav Šicha

  3. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Radka Ležalová

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  1. Marcel Honza
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  2. Václav Šicha
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Correspondence to Marcel Honza.

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Communicated by F. Bairlein

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Honza, M., Šicha, V., Procházka, P. et al. Host nest defense against a color-dimorphic brood parasite: great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) versus common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus). J Ornithol 147, 629–637 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-006-0088-y

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