Host species of brood-parasitic birds can evolve features such as spots, squiggles and colours on their eggs that act like ‘signatures’ that are difficult for parasites to forge, helping hosts to detect and reject imposter eggs. In this new paper, we show that hosts of cuckoo finches and diederik cuckoos in Zambia have optimised this defence by arranging signature traits in unpredictable combinations. Thus, egg signatures are individually distinctive and hard for parasites to mimic, helping hosts distinguish parasitic eggs from their own. The paper arose from MPhil research by Eleanor Caves (co-authored by Martin Stevens, Edwin Iversen and Claire Spottiswoode) and the data were all obtained from Major John Colebrook-Robjent‘s wonderful egg collection. It is available open access in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B.
Gabriel Jamie gives seminar on the role of learning in speciation
What role does learning play in the origin of new species? As part of the "Network for the Integration of Speciation" research series, Dr Gabriel Jamie gave a seminar together with Professor Maria Servedio on learning, imprinting and speciation:...