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Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo
Defences of hosts against brood parasitic cuckoos include detection and ejection of cuckoo eggs from the nest. Ejection behaviour often involves puncturing the cuckoo egg, which is predicted to drive the evolution of thicker eggshells in cuckoos that parasitise such hosts. Here we test this predicti...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9012832/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35428801 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09872-9 |
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author | Holleley, Clare E. Grieve, Alice C. Grealy, Alicia Medina, Iliana Langmore, Naomi E. |
author_facet | Holleley, Clare E. Grieve, Alice C. Grealy, Alicia Medina, Iliana Langmore, Naomi E. |
author_sort | Holleley, Clare E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Defences of hosts against brood parasitic cuckoos include detection and ejection of cuckoo eggs from the nest. Ejection behaviour often involves puncturing the cuckoo egg, which is predicted to drive the evolution of thicker eggshells in cuckoos that parasitise such hosts. Here we test this prediction in four Australian cuckoo species and their hosts, using Hall-effect magnetic-inference to directly estimate eggshell thickness in parasitised clutches. In Australia, hosts that build cup-shaped nests are generally adept at ejecting cuckoo eggs, whereas hosts that build dome-shaped nests mostly accept foreign eggs. We analysed two datasets: a small sample of hosts with known egg ejection rates and a broader sample of hosts where egg ejection behaviour was inferred based on nest type (dome or cup). Contrary to predictions, cuckoos that exploit dome-nesting hosts (acceptor hosts) had significantly thicker eggshells relative to their hosts than cuckoos that exploit cup-nesting hosts (ejector hosts). No difference in eggshell thicknesses was observed in the smaller sample of hosts with known egg ejection rates, probably due to lack of power. Overall cuckoo eggshell thickness did not deviate from the expected avian relationship between eggshell thickness and egg length estimated from 74 bird species. Our results do not support the hypothesis that thicker eggshells have evolved in response to host ejection behaviour in Australian cuckoos, but are consistent with the hypothesis that thicker eggshells have evolved to reduce the risk of breakage when eggs are dropped into dome nests. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9012832 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90128322022-04-18 Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo Holleley, Clare E. Grieve, Alice C. Grealy, Alicia Medina, Iliana Langmore, Naomi E. Sci Rep Article Defences of hosts against brood parasitic cuckoos include detection and ejection of cuckoo eggs from the nest. Ejection behaviour often involves puncturing the cuckoo egg, which is predicted to drive the evolution of thicker eggshells in cuckoos that parasitise such hosts. Here we test this prediction in four Australian cuckoo species and their hosts, using Hall-effect magnetic-inference to directly estimate eggshell thickness in parasitised clutches. In Australia, hosts that build cup-shaped nests are generally adept at ejecting cuckoo eggs, whereas hosts that build dome-shaped nests mostly accept foreign eggs. We analysed two datasets: a small sample of hosts with known egg ejection rates and a broader sample of hosts where egg ejection behaviour was inferred based on nest type (dome or cup). Contrary to predictions, cuckoos that exploit dome-nesting hosts (acceptor hosts) had significantly thicker eggshells relative to their hosts than cuckoos that exploit cup-nesting hosts (ejector hosts). No difference in eggshell thicknesses was observed in the smaller sample of hosts with known egg ejection rates, probably due to lack of power. Overall cuckoo eggshell thickness did not deviate from the expected avian relationship between eggshell thickness and egg length estimated from 74 bird species. Our results do not support the hypothesis that thicker eggshells have evolved in response to host ejection behaviour in Australian cuckoos, but are consistent with the hypothesis that thicker eggshells have evolved to reduce the risk of breakage when eggs are dropped into dome nests. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-04-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9012832/ /pubmed/35428801 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09872-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Holleley, Clare E. Grieve, Alice C. Grealy, Alicia Medina, Iliana Langmore, Naomi E. Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo |
title | Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo |
title_full | Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo |
title_fullStr | Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo |
title_full_unstemmed | Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo |
title_short | Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo |
title_sort | thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of australian cuckoo |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9012832/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35428801 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09872-9 |
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