The Brown-Headed Cowbird: A Model Species for Testing Novel Research Questions in Animal Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Peer, Brian D.; Rivers, James W.; Merrill, Loren; Robinson, Scott K.; Rothstein, Stephen I.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73138-4_9

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 159 publications

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“…While we did not examine parent-offspring behaviors and thus cannot confirm whether (or how) parents manipulate their offspring into fledging, our findings on the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) provide evidence in favor of the parental manipulation hypothesis. Utilizing a rare breeding strategy known as brood parasitism (placing eggs into other species nests), cowbirds are known to parasitize over 200 host species (33), and as such, their offspring are not evolved for a specific host's nesting ecology. Thus, under the nestling choice hypothesis, we would expect cowbirds to leave their nest at the same age and stage of development regardless of the host species, yet cowbirds are known to fledge across a wide range of ages and stages of development (8 to 13 d) (34) SI Appendix, Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental benefits and offspring costs reflect parent–offspring conflict over the age of fledging among songbirds

Jones

Brawn

Ausprey

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Parent–offspring conflict has explained a variety of ecological phenomena across animal taxa, but its role in mediating when songbirds fledge remains controversial. Specifically, ecologists have long debated the influence of songbird parents on the age of fledging: Do parents manipulate offspring into fledging to optimize their own fitness or do offspring choose when to leave? To provide greater insight into parent–offspring conflict over fledging age in songbirds, we compared nesting and postfledging survival rates across 18 species from eight studies in the continental United States. For 12 species (67%), we found that fledging transitions offspring from comparatively safe nesting environments to more dangerous postfledging ones, resulting in a postfledging bottleneck. This raises an important question: as past research shows that offspring would benefit—improve postfledging survival—by staying in the nest longer: Why then do they fledge so early? Our findings suggest that parents manipulate offspring into fledging early for their own benefit, but at the cost of survival for each individual offspring, reflecting parent–offspring conflict. Early fledging incurred, on average, a 13.6% postfledging survival cost for each individual offspring, but parents benefitted through a 14.0% increase in the likelihood of raising at least one offspring to independence. These parental benefits were uneven across species—driven by an interaction between nest mortality risk and brood size—and predicted the age of fledging among species. Collectively, our results suggest that parent–offspring conflict and associated parental benefits explain variation in fledging age among songbird species and why postfledging bottlenecks occur.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental benefits and offspring costs reflect parent–offspring conflict over the age of fledging among songbirds

Jones

Brawn

Ausprey

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Complementarily, we could use comparative phylogenetics (Question 1) between different hosts and their parasites to look at host-parasite interactions at varying stages of coevolution [117]. For example, parasitic lineages of Viduidae (parasitic whydahs) and Anomalospiza (cuckoo finches), common cuckoos, and cowbirds have been estimated to have existed for 13, 6-8 and 3-4 mya, respectively [147][148][149][150], providing considerable variation in the duration of potential coevolutionary interactions. As more molecular data and sophisticated analysis methods become available, this variation could be used to resolve whether brood parasites and hosts evolve at different rates, how brood parasites diverge, and the timing of host specialisation [149][150][151].…”

Section: Avian Brood Parasitism As a Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond genes-for-behaviour: the potential for genomics to resolve questions in avian brood parasitism

Rönkä¹,

Eroukhmanoff²,

Kulmuni³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Brood parasite-host interactions are among the most easily observable and amenable natural laboratories of antagonistic coevolution, and as such have intrigued evolutionary biologists for decades. It is therefore surprising they have not been at the forefront of genomic studies on evolutionary adaptation. Here we review state-of-the-art molecular methods in studying avian brood parasitism, a model system in behavioural ecology. We highlight outstanding questions to bring examples of how genomic tools are not merely about ‘finding a gene for behaviour’, but can be used to study the causes and mechanisms of (co)evolutionary adaptation. In doing so, we promote behavioural and molecular ecologists to integrate Tinbergen’s questions into a collaborative, coherent science aiming to solve the mysteries of nature and apply current methodology into other model systems in behavioural ecology.

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“…Indeed, the prolific seasonal egg‐laying behavior of cowbirds (Hahn et al, 1999; Louder et al, 2019; Scott & Ankney, 1980) combined with the species' ability to successfully parasitize a large proportion of the passerine community where it is present (Friedman & Kiff, 1985), can allow researchers to provide robust tests on the effects of brood parasitism across multiple host species in sympatry. Furthermore, cowbirds have long served as an important system for studying coevolution (Peer et al, 2017) and are known to contribute to the declines of threatened/endangered host species (Rothstein & Peer, 2005), making the effects of cowbird parasitism relevant to conservation biologists as well as evolutionary ecologists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontogenetic effects of brood parasitism by the Brown‐headed Cowbird on host offspring

Jones

Giovanni

Hauber

et al. 2023

Ecology

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Nest‐sharer avian brood parasites do not evict or otherwise kill host chicks, but instead inflict a range of negative effects on their nestmates that are mediated by interactions between the parasite and host life history traits. Although many of the negative fitness effects of avian brood parasitism are well documented across diverse host species, there remains a paucity of studies that have examined the impacts of parasitism across the entirety of host ontogeny (i.e., from when an egg is laid until independence). More specifically, few studies have examined the impact of brood parasitism on the pre‐ and post‐fledging development, physiology, behavior, and survival of host offspring. To help fill this knowledge gap, we assessed the effects of brood parasitism by Brown‐headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) across the ontogeny (incubation, nestling, and post‐fledging period) of nine sympatrically breeding host species in central Illinois, USA; due to sample sizes, impacts on the post‐fledging period were only examined in two of the nine species. Specifically, we examined the impact of brood parasitism on ontogenetic markers including the embryonic heart rate, hatching rate, nestling period length, nest survival, and offspring growth and development. Additionally, in species in which we found negative impacts of cowbird parasitism on host nestmate ontogeny, we examined whether the difference in adult size between parasites and their hosts and their hatching asynchrony positively predicted variation in host costs across these focal taxa. We found that costs of cowbird parasitism were most severe during early nesting stages (reduction in the host clutch or brood size) and were predicted negatively by host size and positively by incubation length. In contrast, we only found limited costs of cowbird parasitism on other stages of host ontogeny; critically, post‐fledging survival did not differ between host offspring that fledged alongside cowbirds and those that did not. Our findings (i) highlight the direct costs of cowbird parasitism on host fitness, (ii) provide evidence for when (the stage) those costs are manifested, and (iii) may help to explain why many anti‐cowbird defenses of hosts have evolved for protection from parasitism during the laying and incubation stages.

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The Brown-Headed Cowbird: A Model Species for Testing Novel Research Questions in Animal Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Cited by 6 publications

References 159 publications

Parental benefits and offspring costs reflect parent–offspring conflict over the age of fledging among songbirds

Parental benefits and offspring costs reflect parent–offspring conflict over the age of fledging among songbirds

Beyond genes-for-behaviour: the potential for genomics to resolve questions in avian brood parasitism

Ontogenetic effects of brood parasitism by the Brown‐headed Cowbird on host offspring

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