Honeyguides and other brood parasitic birds are famous for tricking host parents by laying eggs that mimic their own. Honeyguide eggs mimic host eggs in size yet, surprisingly, bee-eater hosts are undiscriminating and readily accept mismatched eggs. This study shows that honeyguide egg size adaptation has probably rather evolved to trick other honeyguides, not host parents: honeyguides selectively puncture any mismatched egg already present in the nest when they lay their own, lest it be the offspring of another honeyguide female and brutally kill their own chick when it hatches.
Read the full paper in Biology Letters [Open Access], or Ed Yong’s excellent article about the study. Here are some other nice articles and podcasts online covering this study: The Behaviour, Ecology & Evolution Podcast | Take Part blog | Earth Times.
Evolutionary Biology Crash Course
Tanmay Dixit was a member of a team organising and lecturing in the inaugural Evolutionary Biology Crash Course. This course, aimed at undergraduate or early-postgraduate students, teaches evolutionary principles to students who have had limited opportunities to be exposed to evolutionary ideas. The course is funded by the Equal Opportunities Initiative Fund of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). Tanmay presented lectures on behavioural ecology and evolution, focussing on kin selection, coevolution, and parasitism. Over 700 students, with the vast majority from the global South, attended the course, which was a resounding success!