Search Results - "brood parasitism"

ABSTRACT During the nestling period, brood‐parasitic birds stimulate host parents to provide food through complex visual and auditory signals, including emitting supernormal stimuli in the form of begging calls to increase the feeding frequency. However, whether the begging calls of brood‐parasitic...

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With the ongoing acceleration of global urbanization, an increasingly larger proportion of natural habitats are being transformed and utilized by humans. Urbanization has a substantial impact on animal populations, exposing them to greater risks, but also presenting new opportunities and resources....

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ABSTRACT Brood parasitism negatively affects the reproductive success of hosts, leading many hosts to evolve defense strategies to recognize and reject parasitized eggs. While studies have shown that hosts may adjust their defensive behavior according to parasitism risk, whether different geographic...

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ABSTRACT Habitat loss and fragmentation (HLF) resulting from anthropogenic disturbances is one of the greatest threats to numerous threatened taxa facing extinction risks. HLF may devastate biodiversity through various pathways such as restricting animal movement and gene flow, reducing opportunitie...

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ABSTRACT Egg recognition is one of the most common strategies utilized by host birds to combat brood parasitism. Eggshell surface features (e.g., eggshell color and spots) are important cues for host egg recognition, enabling avian hosts to recognize and reject foreign eggs. The barn swallow (Hirund...

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ABSTRACT Egg retrieval behavior in hosts within avian brood parasitism systems was found to be regulated by the motivation to reject parasitic eggs. However, due to the limitations in the research systems, there is a lack of effective validation regarding the adaptation mechanisms of cuckoo hosts to...

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The Least Bell’s Vireo ( Vireo bellii pusillus ) is a federally endangered songbird restricted to Southern California, USA, and Baja California, Mexico. Historically abundant, it suffered a catastrophic population decline during the twentieth century due to widespread habitat destruction and the arr...

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ABSTRACT In this study, we document the case of a common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) successfully locating and parasitizing the nest of a gray bushchat (Saxicola ferreus) by exploiting the latter's nest defense behavior in Liuzhi, Guizhou, southwest China. We found that the common cuckoo could ide...

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