Absence of anti-parasitic defenses in an Asian population of the magpie, a regular host of the great spotted cuckoo in Europe.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Yang C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8488993 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Absence of anti-parasitic defenses in an Asian population of the magpie, a regular host of the great spotted cuckoo in Europe.
Yang Canchao C Huang Jialiang J Liang Wei W Møller Anders P AP
Current zoology 20200409 3
Similar Datasets
Project description:Diet and host genetic or evolutionary history are considered the two main factors determining gut microbiota of animals, although studies are scarce in natural populations. The system of great spotted cuckoos (Clamatorglandarius) parasitizing magpies (Pica pica) is ideal to study both effects since magpie adults feed cuckoo and magpie nestlings with the same diet and, consequently, differences in gut microbiota of nestlings of these two species will mainly reflect the importance of genetic components. Moreover, the diet of adults and of nestling cuckoos drastically differ from each other and, thus, differences and similarities in their microbiotas would respectively reflect the effect of environmental and genetic factors. We used next-generation sequencing technologies to analyze the gut microbiota of cuckoo adults and nestlings and of magpie nestlings. The highest α-diversity estimates appeared in nestling cuckoos and the lowest in nestling magpies. Moreover, despite the greatest differences in the microbiome composition of magpies and cuckoos of both ages, cuckoo nestlings harbored a mixture of the Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) present in adult cuckoos and nestling magpies. We identified the bacterial taxa responsible for such results. These results suggest important phylogenetic components determining gut microbiome of nestlings, and that diet might be responsible for similarities between gut microbiome of cuckoo and magpie nestlings that allow cuckoos to digest food provided by magpie adults.
| S-EPMC6115760 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Natural selection penalizes individuals that provide costly parental care to non-relatives. However, feedings to brood-parasitic fledglings by individuals other than their foster parents, although anecdotic, have been commonly observed, also in the great spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius)--magpie (Pica pica) system, but this behaviour has never been studied in depth. In a first experiment, we here show that great spotted cuckoo fledglings that were translocated to a distant territory managed to survive. This implies that obtaining food from foreign magpies is a frequent and efficient strategy used by great spotted cuckoo fledglings. A second experiment, in which we presented a stuffed-cuckoo fledgling in magpie territories, showed that adult magpies caring for magpie fledglings responded aggressively in most of the trials and never tried to feed the stuffed cuckoo, whereas magpies that were caring for cuckoo fledglings reacted rarely with aggressive behavior and were sometimes disposed to feed the stuffed cuckoo. In a third experiment we observed feedings to post-fledgling cuckoos by marked adult magpies belonging to four different possibilities with respect to breeding status (i.e. composition of the brood: only cuckoos, only magpies, mixed, or failed breeding attempt). All non-parental feeding events to cuckoos were provided by magpies that were caring only for cuckoo fledglings. These results strongly support the conclusion that cuckoo fledglings that abandon their foster parents get fed by other adult magpies that are currently caring for other cuckoo fledglings. These findings are crucial to understand the co-evolutionary arms race between brood parasites and their hosts because they show that the presence of the host's own nestlings for comparison is likely a key clue to favour the evolution of fledgling discrimination and provide new insights on several relevant points such as learning mechanisms and multiparasitism.
| S-EPMC4182665 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Host defences against cuckoo parasitism and cuckoo trickeries to overcome them are a classic example of antagonistic coevolution. Recently it has been reported that this relationship may turn to be mutualistic in the case of the carrion crow (Corvus corone) and its brood parasite, the great spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius), given that experimentally and naturally parasitized nests were depredated at a lower rate than non-parasitized nests. This result was interpreted as a consequence of the antipredatory properties of a fetid cloacal secretion produced by cuckoo nestlings, which presumably deters predators from parasitized host nests. This potential defensive mechanism would therefore explain the detected higher fledgling success of parasitized nests during breeding seasons with high predation risk. Here, in a different study population, we explored the expected benefits in terms of reduced nest predation in naturally and experimentally parasitized nests of two different host species, carrion crows and magpies (Pica pica). During the incubation phase non-parasitized nests were depredated more frequently than parasitized nests. However, during the nestling phase, parasitized nests were not depredated at a lower rate than non-parasitized nests, neither in magpie nor in carrion crow nests, and experimental translocation of great spotted cuckoo hatchlings did not reveal causal effects between parasitism state and predation rate of host nests. Therefore, our results do not fit expectations and, thus, do not support the fascinating possibility that great spotted cuckoo nestlings could have an antipredatory effect for host nestlings, at least in our study area. We also discuss different possibilities that may conciliate these with previous results, but also several alternative explanations, including the lack of generalizability of the previously documented mutualistic association.
| S-EPMC5396876 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The study of brood parasitism has traditionally been focused on the breeding period, but recent evidence suggests that it urgently needs a new spatio-temporal perspective to explore novel avenues on brood parasite-host co-evolutionary interactions. Many brood parasites are migrants, but their ecology outside their short breeding season is poorly known. The great spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius) is one of the classical models in the study of brood parasitism, however, there is very little information on its migratory strategy, route and wintering grounds. Furthermore, there is no previous information on the geographical distribution of mortality and its causes in this species; information that is critical to understand the fluctuations in cuckoo populations and detect potential conservation risks. Using satellite tracking technology, we provide novel insight into the migratory behavior and performance of the great spotted cuckoo. We found individuals from southern Spain to be long-distance nocturnal migrants that use the East Atlantic Flyway for both post and pre-breeding migration, and that winter in the western Sahel. We found evidence of individual variation in their migration route, particularly regarding their post-breeding behavior in Spain. Our study also suggests that the south of Morocco is the most dangerous area due to a large number of deaths during the post-breeding migratory period. Furthermore, we found that natural predation seems to be the main cause of death, probably due to raptors, although human activities (i.e. hunting) could also played a role in the southern Mediterranean shore. Our study offers novel findings and challenges traditional ideas on the ecology of this species providing a good example of how the new spatio-temporal perspective can expand our knowledge on brood parasites.
| S-EPMC6319774 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Interspecific brood parasitism occurs in several independent lineages of birds and social insects, putatively evolving from intraspecific brood parasitism. The cuckoo catfish, Synodontis multipunctatus, the only known obligatory non-avian brood parasite, exploits mouthbrooding cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika, despite the absence of parental care in its evolutionary lineage (family Mochokidae). Cuckoo catfish participate in host spawning events, with their eggs subsequently collected and brooded by parental cichlids, though they can later be selectively rejected by the host. One scenario for the origin of brood parasitism in cuckoo catfish is through predation of cichlid eggs during spawning, eventually resulting in a spatial and temporal match in oviposition by host and parasite. Here we demonstrate experimentally that, uniquely among all known brood parasites, cuckoo catfish have the capacity to re-infect their hosts at a late developmental stage following egg rejection. We show that cuckoo catfish offspring can survive outside the host buccal cavity and re-infect parental hosts at a later incubation phase by exploiting the strong parental instinct of hosts to collect stray offspring. This finding implies an alternative evolutionary origin for cuckoo catfish brood parasitism, with the parental response of host cichlids facilitating its evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'The coevolutionary biology of brood parasitism: from mechanism to pattern'.
| S-EPMC6388028 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Brood parasites have demanding needs of host resources. Brood parasitic offspring are highly competitive and frequently cause the failure of host broods and the survival of a single parasitic offspring. Accordingly, virulent brood parasites lay a single egg in the same host nest to avoid sibling competition. In the cuckoo catfish (Synodontis multipunctatus), which parasitize mouthbrooding cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika, the modes of host and parasite oviposition lead to frequent cases of multiple parasitism. We experimentally tested the prediction that multiple parasitism leads to frequent cannibalism among offspring. Cuckoo catfish embryos prey upon host offspring to obtain nourishment during their 3-week development in the host buccal cavity and may also consume conspecific embryos. The potential benefits of cannibalism in the system are, therefore, twofold; to decrease competition for limited resources (i.e., host brood with rich yolk sacs) and to directly obtain nourishment by consuming rivals. We found that cannibalism indeed provided measurable benefits in terms of increased growth of the cannibals, but cannibalism was rare and typically occurred once all host offspring had been consumed. This implies that cannibalism among cuckoo catfish embryos emerges to mitigate starvation rather than eliminate competition.
| S-EPMC10332450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Interactions between avian hosts and brood parasites can provide a model for how animals adapt to a changing world. Reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) hosts employ costly defenses to combat parasitism by common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus). During the past three decades cuckoos have declined markedly across England, reducing parasitism at our study site (Wicken Fen) from 24% of reed warbler nests in 1985 to 1% in 2012. Here we show with experiments that host mobbing and egg rejection defenses have tracked this decline in local parasitism risk: the proportion of reed warbler pairs mobbing adult cuckoos (assessed by responses to cuckoo mounts and models) has declined from 90% to 38%, and the proportion rejecting nonmimetic cuckoo eggs (assessed by responses to model eggs) has declined from 61% to 11%. This is despite no change in response to other nest enemies or mimetic model eggs. Individual variation in both defenses is predicted by parasitism risk during the host's egg-laying period. Furthermore, the response of our study population to temporal variation in parasitism risk can also explain spatial variation in egg rejection behavior in other populations across Europe. We suggest that spatial and temporal variation in parasitism risk has led to the evolution of plasticity in reed warbler defenses.
| S-EPMC4209118 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Obligate brood parasites delegate the workload of costly parental care to their hosts. Theory predicts that release from demanding parental care increases the importance of other factors to shape mating patterns. However, behavioural observations and parentage estimates are notoriously difficult to obtain in species with covert reproductive strategies, such as brood parasites, and evidence for their mating strategies are scarce. Molecular genetic methods provide a powerful tool to identify concealed mating patterns. Here, we reconstruct the parentage of cuckoo catfish (Synodontis multipunctatus) clutches collected in the wild using a combination of newly developed microsatellite markers, mitochondrial markers, and maximum likelihood estimates of pairwise relatedness. Cuckoo catfish parasitise mouthbrooding cichlids in Lake Tanganyika, but a natural spawning of the brood parasite has never been observed. We examined 429 females of confirmed host cichlid species (parasitism prevalence 6%; 24 parasitised clutches with 1-14 embryos) and found that 46% of clutches with three or more offspring (i.e., 6 out of 13) were parented by more than two catfish individuals. We demonstrated variable mating patterns including polyandrous and polygynous mating, and host sharing by separate, genetically monogamous, catfish pairs. This indicates that cuckoo catfish parasitism involves groups of catfish with reduced capability to monopolise mating opportunities. In general, our results demonstrate how reproductive strategy and mating patterns in a species with concealed breeding behaviour can be investigated and provide valuable insights into the mating system of a brood parasitic species other than hitherto studied avian brood parasites.
| S-EPMC11874674 | biostudies-literature
Project description:It is well known that avian brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, called hosts. It remains less clear, however, just how parasites are able to recognize their hosts and identify the exact location of the appropriate nests to lay their eggs in. While previous studies attributed high importance to visual signals in finding the hosts' nests (e.g. nest building activity or the distance and direct sight of the nest from vantage points used by the brood parasites), the role of host acoustic signals during the nest searching stage has been largely neglected. We present experimental evidence that both female and male common cuckoos Cuculus canorus pay attention to their host's, the great reed warbler's Acrocephalus arundinaceus alarm calls, relative to the calls of an unparasitized species used as controls. Parallel to this, we found no difference between the visibility of parasitized and unparasitized nests during drone flights, but great reed warblers that alarmed more frequently experienced higher rates of parasitism. We conclude that alarm calls might be advantageous for the hosts when used against enemies or for alerting conspecifics, but can act in a detrimental manner by providing important nest location cues for eavesdropping brood parasites. Our results suggest that host alarm calls may constitute a suitable trait on which cuckoo nestlings can imprint on to recognize their primary host species later in life. Our study contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding the context-dependency of animal signals, by providing a novel example of a beneficial acoustic trait intercepted by a heterospecific and used against the emitter.
| S-EPMC6898711 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Mechanisms Affecting the Gut of Preterm Infants in Enteral Feeding Trials
| PRJEB47702 | ENA