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Eggshell spotting in brood parasitic shiny cowbirds (Molothrus bonariensis) is not linked to the female sex chromosome

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Abstract

For avian brood parasites in which individual females are host-specialists, the arms race between hosts and parasites has favored egg color polymorphism in the parasite, with female lineages laying mimetic eggs that resemble those of the host species they parasitize. Female sex-linked inheritance of egg color fosters evolutionary stability of egg polymorphism if female lineages show both consistent eggshell color and host use. This co-evolutionary relationship is unlikely to occur if individual brood parasites use different hosts or if egg color is not maternally inherited. The shiny cowbird (Molothrus bonariensis) is an extreme generalist brood parasite that shows a very high degree of egg polymorphism. We tested whether egg spotting in this species has female sex-linked inheritance. If genetic factors controlling the expression of egg spotting were present on the female-specific W chromosome, we expected co-segregation between spotting patterns and mtDNA haplotypes, as both W and mtDNA are maternally inherited. In contrast to the known maternal inheritance of spotting patterns in great tits, we found no associations between eggshell spotting and mtDNA haplotypes, which suggests that eggshell spotting is not maternally inherited in this cowbird species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank V. Ferretti, P. Llambías, G. Fernández, M. Mermoz, V. Massoni, V. Fiorini, D. Tuero, and M.C. de Mársico for their help in the collection of the samples, and L. Stenzler for her support in the laboratory. We also thank A.G. Di Giácomo, M. de la Peña, J. Lereté, and N. Cozzani for providing us information about the frequency of white eggs in Formosa, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires (Tornsquist), and Uruguay, respectively, and M. Hauber and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. We finally thank A. de la Colina for providing us photographs of shiny cowbird eggs, and D. Kelmansky for her support in power analyses. BM was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). VAC and JCR are Research Fellows of CONICET. This study was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (grant 04-20170) and the University of Buenos Aires (grant X158).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellón II Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Bettina Mahler, Viviana A. Confalonieri & Juan C. Reboreda

  2. Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY, 14850, USA

    Irby J. Lovette

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  1. Bettina Mahler
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  2. Viviana A. Confalonieri
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  3. Irby J. Lovette
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  4. Juan C. Reboreda
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Correspondence to Bettina Mahler.

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Communicated by M. Soler

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Mahler, B., Confalonieri, V.A., Lovette, I.J. et al. Eggshell spotting in brood parasitic shiny cowbirds (Molothrus bonariensis) is not linked to the female sex chromosome. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62, 1193–1199 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0548-x

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