“cu-coo”: Can You Recognize My Stepparents? – A Study of Host-Specific Male Call Divergence in the Common Cuckoo

The presence of multiple host-specific races in the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus has long been recognized as an evolutionary enigma but how this genetic divergence could be maintained is still equivocal. Some recent studies supported biparental genetic contribution in maintaining the host-races, implying the necessity that they should recognize and mate assortatively with those who belong to the same host-race. One potential mechanism to accomplish this is that males may produce distinctive calls according to host-specific lineages. In order to test this hypothesis, we carried out a comparative study for male cuckoo calls recorded from three distant populations, where two populations share a same host species while the other parasitizes a different host species. Populations with similar habitat structures, maintaining comparable distance interval (ca. 150 km) between neighboring ones, were selected so as to minimize any other causes of vocal differentiation except the pattern of host use. By comparing the vocal characteristics of male cuckoos at the level of individual as well as population, we found that individual males indeed produced different calls in terms of spectral and temporal features. However, these differences disappeared when we compared the calls at the population level according to host species and geographic location. In conclusion, it seems unlikely for the cuckoos to identify the stepparent of male cuckoos based solely on the vocal characteristics, although they may be able to use this cue for individual recognition. Future studies including detailed morphological and genetic comparisons will be worthwhile to further elucidate this issue.