Manipulative begging by parasitic cuckoo nestlings and paradoxical host behaviour

Manipulative begging by parasitic cuckoo nestlings and paradoxical host behaviour.

Have brood parasitic cowbird nestlings caused the evolution of more intense begging by host nestlings?

Please cite this article in press as: Rivers, J.W host nestlings?, Animal Behaviour (2010), d Obligate avian brood parasites rely entirely on host species to raise their offspring, a unique behaviour that has made them an ideal group for a wide variety of ecological and evolutionary topics (Rothstein 1990; Davies 2000). Because brood parasites are raised by heterospecific parents and often shar...

Manipulative begging calls by parasitic cuckoo chicks: why should true offspring not do the same?

Differences in begging behaviour between barn swallow, Hirundo rustica, nestlings.

Recent models of parent-offspring communication suggest that nestling begging reliably reflects food requirements, and therefore should increase with nestling need. Need may be affected by short-term variations in hunger, as well as by long-term factors such as relative size, growth rate and body condition. In the present study, the brood sizes of barn swallows were manipulated to create differ...

Embryonic Learning of Vocal Passwords in Superb Fairy-Wrens Reveals Intruder Cuckoo Nestlings

How do parents recognize their offspring when the cost of making a recognition error is high? Avian brood parasite-host systems have been used to address this question because of the high cost of parasitism to host fitness. We discovered that superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) females call to their eggs, and upon hatching, nestlings produce begging calls with key elements from their mother's "...