Conspecific brood parasitism (CBP) is a reproductive tactic whereby a parasitic female lays its eggs into the nests of other conspecific females. Genetic‐based data on the occurrence of CBP in birds, however, is still relatively scarce. We analysed prevalence of CBP in a ground‐nesting diving duck, the common pochard Aythya ferina, using a set of 17 microsatellites. Compared to related species, our population showed a relatively high level of CBP, with 39% of genotyped pochard eggs laid parasitically and 89% of nests containing ≥ 1 parasitic egg. In addition, we observed relatively high rates of interspecific brood parasitism (13% of eggs), caused predominantly by mallard Anas plathyrhynchos and tufted duck Aythya fuligula. CBP eggs had decreased hatching success compared to host eggs, with 65% of CBP and 95% of non‐CBP genotyped eggs hatching successfully. Our data suggest that this was probably due to improper timing of parasitic egglaying, which compromised synchronised hatching of CBP and host‐eggs. Despite high rates of CBP in our pochard popu lation, fitness costs associated with this reproductive tactic appear to be low for host females since neither clutch size nor host‐egg hatching probability were reduced due to CBP.
Ten polymorphic microsatellites for the common pochard were isolated from microsatellite enriched libraries. Seven microsatellites were obtained based on cross-species amplification. These 17 microsatellites exhibited polymorphism within a population sample, with numbers of alleles per locus ranging from 2 to 17 and expected heterozygosities from 0.053 to 0.916. These markers will be helpful for studying reproductive strategies in the pochard, as well as in addressing population genetic questions. Four of the microsatellite loci showed significant departures from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and/or high estimates of null allele frequencies in our study population. Hence, they should be used with caution.
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