Farming Behavior by the Common Cuckoos in Its Daurian Redstart Hosts
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① Key Laboratory of Biodiversity Conservation in Karst Mountain Area of Southwest of State Forestry Ministry,School of Life Sciences,Guizhou Normal University

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    Abstract:

    Obligate avian brood parasites lay their eggs in nests belonging to other host species, accordingly, they imposed the costs of parental care to their victims. Hosts evolve defenses to counter brood parasitism such as egg recognition and egg rejection, also nest defense, these host-parasites system well-known arms race are regarded as a textbook example of co-evolutionary Interactions. Natural selection favors the brood parasites such as parasitic cuckoos to evolve effective parasitic strategies under the pressure of anti-parasitism to improve their reproductive fitness. Previous studies revealed that some brood parasites might take the “farming” strategy, which means that they would destroy the content (eggs/nestlings) of host nests, forcing the hosts to re-nest, so they could gain new parasitic opportunities. However, reports on such events in the field are extremely rare in all avian parasitism systems. In May 2018, one case of such farming behavior by the Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) in its Daurian Redstart (Phoenicurus auroreus) host was confirmed by the video recording in Liuzhi area of Guizhou Province, China. By reviewing literatures about farming behaviors in the Common Cuckoo (Table 1), we found that the farming behavior of the Common Cuckoo being more common than previously thought, and the strategy could increase its breeding success.

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ZHONG Guo, 万桂霞, WANG Long-Wu,梁伟. 2019. Farming Behavior by the Common Cuckoos in Its Daurian Redstart Hosts. Chinese Journal of Zoology, 54(6): 800-805.

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History
  • Received:May 05,2019
  • Revised:November 02,2019
  • Adopted:October 28,2019
  • Online: December 10,2019
  • Published: