Talk:Brood parasitism/Archive 1

Question about brood parasitic birds

How come the host doesn't notice that one of the chicks is of a different species, or at least that some of the other chicks are missing? Don't birds have the ability to tell? Does the parasite's parent specifically choose hosts that can't tell?

Eje211 00:19, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Basically, yeah - birds don't have the ability to tell. They'll feed the one with the widest-open mouth first, then (once that one is full) the next-widest-open, and so on until the parent runs out of food. Brood-parasite babies tend to be larger, so their mouths are larger also. Bird parents have small brains that just recognize a few particular traits, and those are the traits that the brood-parasite babies overexpress.

The interesting thing about brood-parasites, incidentally, is that they can't afford to be too successful, otherwise they'll wipe out their caretaker species.DS 14:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I remember reading a study (http://www.pnas.org/content/104/11/4479.full) that found some birds can tell the difference, but that ejecting the parasite chick often resulted in retaliation by the parasite's parents (who are presumably still hanging around the same area). To keep things in perspective, the birds do have to be able to tell their species from others in order to breed successfully. --Pyrochem (talk) 22:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

housecat?

I think it counts.

The housecat has evolved to have a baby-like cry instead of the more typical hiss or roar of a wild cat. (like a bobcat for example) The housecat is also sized like a baby.

People care for housecats, often to the exclusion of having their own kids. The housecat satisfies a maternal longing.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.110.145.57 (talk • contribs) 20:52, August 11, 2006

Housecats may have been bred for size and (relative) tameness, that makes them pets, not brood parasites. jimfbleak 05:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

But still, during the time when cats were being domesticated the cats which were smaller and more tame were more likely to reproduce. Why are domestication and evolution by natural selection mutually exclusive? I think housecats count. Nightpotato (talk) 23:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Female cats still raise their kittens. They do not abandon their young for humans to raise believing them to be our own. Housecats may be considered parasites on humans if you want to, but they are not brood parasites. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There are two ways to look at this then. The adult housecat isn't merely leaving the young to be cared for by humans. The adult housecat itself mimics a human baby. It's good enough to substitute for a human baby in terms of maternal urges, even though the human is not intellectually fooled. So, is brood-for-brood substitution the only thing that counts or does adult-for-brood substitution count? IMHO it counts. 24.170.165.214 (talk) 05:46, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, brood for brood is the only thing that counts in brood parasitism. Moreover, human-cat realtionships are arguably mutualistic, not parasitic. Both benefit. Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:52, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Jesus Christ people! There's something called a pet! Lots of people have them and they are completely non-parasitic. I suppose you think dogs, hamsters, fish, and some small reptiles are brood parasites on humans as well! Furthermore, people choose to raise pets, we don't just find an abandoned kitten at our door, mistake it for a human baby, and care for it only to eventually have it eat all the food of your other kids! It's not a parasite if the host intentionally acquires the so-called parasite! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.130.109 (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree, there is a reason for the existence of the term "symbiosis" as another guiding principle between the noninvasive (with regards to metabolism) interaction of organism, however this halfbaked attempt to write a "scientific" article completely refuses to aknowledge the possible benefits of said interaction for both species, likely for completely unscientifc reasons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.128.233.153 (talk) 10:29, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Whether an interaction between two species counts as parasitic or otherwise depends on fitness (not metabolism), namely the parasite increases its fitness at the cost of the fitness of its host (see wikipedia). In that sense, the housecat is likely a parasite because it exploits and fulfils parental urges, with a potential reducing effect on human offspring number and thus a fitness reduction. Housecats, on the other hand, have tremendous fitness benefits from being taken care of by humans as do all organisms that are being raised and cultivated by humans. I agree, though, that the housecat is not more specifically a brood parasite, for the reasons mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Limbic Animalic (talk • contribs) 09:57, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Cuckoo wasp

I put in a brief mention of the cuckoo wasp - an amazing and beautiful critter I had the pleasure of watching last year. They are metallic blue-green. I know they occur in Australia, not sure about elsewhere in the world. Would be worth finding more info on them for the article. Gemfyre 06:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Gallery

I'm interested in making a Commons gallery/category for this subject, though the only image specifically of a brood parasitism and not just one of the species involved I know of is the Cuckoo one here, and it's not even over there yet. Does anyone know of any others available? Would it be any use just to use the parasite species themselves until something suitable comes along? Richard001 08:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Insect cases

Should this be expanded upon more here, or somewhere else? The article suggests they are normally treated as kleptoparasites, so I'm not sure how much detail this section should have. Richard001 23:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Host nestlings will often starve to death

Article currently reads: "In cases where the host nestlings are significantly smaller than the parasite nestling, the hosts will often starve to death."

Shouldn't this actually read "... the host nestlings will often starve to death." ?

I'll leave this to someone more familiar with the topic. Karl gregory jones (talk) 22:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds fine. I'll change it. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thx Sunbird, good work. Karl gregory jones (talk) 03:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Cuckoldry?

Using the term "cuckoldry" in the article before saying some cuckoos are (perhaps the most well known) brood parasites is putting the cart before the horse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.157.214.59 (talk) 20:48, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Contradiction

The article states "In many monogamous bird species, there are extra-pair matings resulting in males outside the pair bond siring offspring and used by males to escape from the parental investment in raising their offspring." How can you have an extra-pair mating in a monogamous species?129.139.1.68 (talk) 13:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

A monogamous breeding system is one where single pairs raise young, as opposed to polygamous systems. Just because there is cheating going on does not mean that the system being cheated isn't monoamy. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

In Dinosaurs

There is fossil evidence that some dinosaurs may have been brood parasites, such as the troodontid Byronosaurus for instance. A pair of hatchling Byronosaurus were found in a nest of eggs belonging to the oviraptorid Citipati, and there is a hypothesis that Byronosaurus were brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of oviraptorids and perhaps other dinosaurs' nests as well. Should this have mention in the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinolover45 (talk • contribs) 15:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Pets as brood/social parasites

Here's a 1997 paper which looks at pets from the viewpoint of parasitism; Archer J. Why do people love their pets?. Evolution and Human Behavior. 1997;18:237–259. Interesting.

Searching for "Why Do People Love Their Pets? John Archer" shows that this has hit the mainstream press on several occasions, but I can't at the moment find any academic followup to this extremely interesting take on pet ownership. -- The Anome (talk) 08:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/truth-about-dogs.html -- The Anome (talk) 08:26, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Added a few sentences on hosts that bring offspring back to their own nests (bit different from cuckoo scenario in which the cuckoo places its eggs in the hosts' nests) NK2015 (talk) 12:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Mafia hypothesis

The section on the "Mafia hypothesis" has some fairly unencyclopedic parts to it (emphasized):

It has often been a question why the majority of the hosts of brood parasites care for the nestlings of their parasites. Not only do these brood parasites usually differ significantly in size and appearance, but it is highly probable that they reduce the reproductive success of their hosts. So what possible benefits are gained from providing this parental care? Through studies in an attempt to answer this question evolved the "Mafia hypothesis". This hypothesis revolves around host manipulations induced by behaviors of the brood parasite. Upon the detection and rejection of a brood parasite's egg, the host's nest is depredated upon, its nest destroyed and nestlings injured or killed. This threatening response is indirectly enhancing selective pressures favoring aggressive parasite behavior that may result in positive feedback between Mafia-like parasite and compliant host behaviors.[13]

I tried to re-write the italicized sentences with a simple declarative sentence rather than a rhetorical question-and-response, but I don't think I have enough understanding of the precise terms in evolutionary biology necessary to turn it into a simple, clear and accurate statement. I was thinking something along the lines of:

According to the "Mafia hypothesis", the threat of violent reprisals by the parasite species induces compliance in the host species.

Problem is that that sentence reads to me like a conscious, compliant action, rather than behaviors that are selected for. If there are terms of art that convey a similar concept, can someone who knows them rephrase this? 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 21:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Another point I had on this section - is it necessary to put "Mafia hypothesis" in quotation marks like that, or is it sufficiently well accepted that it can be referred to directly? If it's not necessary, they should be removed, as it might make the concept seem more fringe than it is. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 21:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Passive Language Decreases Readability

Use of passive language makes this section more difficult to read. This sentence is particularly difficult:

Upon the detection and rejection of a brood parasite's egg, the host's nest is destroyed and nestlings injured or killed.

I presume this means that the host bird is the actor in the first phrase, and the parasite bird is the actor in the second half. I'd rewrite the sentence, but I'm not sure that I have the facts correct.

Jplflyer (talk) 14:38, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 May 2017

In the § Birds. section, replace the mis-punctuated text

four out of the five parasitic cowbirds are generalists,(with the exception of the screaming cowbird) which parasitize a wide variety of hosts

with

four out of the five parasitic cowbirds (all except the screaming cowbird) are generalists which parasitize a wide variety of hosts

68.235.53.187 (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Done Gulumeemee (talk) 01:30, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Egg size

Hello! I just wanted to add in more information on brood parasitism adaptations as I noticed egg size wasn't mentioned.Ejb850 (talk) 03:41, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

That should be ok; do cite your sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Mafia hypothesis

Paragraph 3, sentence 4 of the Mafia hypothesis section states: "Of the nests that were rebuilt by hosts that had previously been predated upon, 85% of those were destroyed.[15]"

Doing a quick keyword search for "85%" in the cited article shows these references:

-Cowbirds parasitized most (85%) renests of the hosts whose nests were depredated.

-Renests linked to cowbird predation were parasitized more frequently (85%) than the other nesting attempts (36%; χ12 = 15.65; P < 0.001).

-Renesting attempts of female warblers whose nests were lost to suspected cowbird nest predation were parasitized at a very high rate (85%), suggesting that cowbirds do benefit from their own predatory behaviors.

I interpret this to mean that 85% of nests that are rebuilt after being destroyed result in cowbirds laying a new egg in the nest, not destroying the new nest. Can anyone confirm if this interpretation is correct or incorrect?

In addition, I think this section is missing the comparison to the group where the cowbirds were prevented from accessing nests after laying a parasitic egg. Without that comparison, there isn't evidence of the Mafia hypothesis (in regards to this source). The citation mentions there was no nest predation in that situation, very strongly linking the cowbirds to the predation. The lack of this information is actually what led me to read the citation, leading to the first confusion above.

--Entfolk (talk) 17:30, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Hm. Firstly, destruction in the paper seems to mean killing of eggs or nestlings, not unweaving the nest itself. The warblers can then reuse the nest ("renest") by laying eggs in it again; and they get heavily parasitized if they do that. The protected control nests do show that predation was largely cowbird, so I've added a mention to the article. Otherwise it seems ok. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Insects, kleptoparasites: Bombus bohemicus shuold be removed from the list of kleptoparasitic cuckoo bees

Bombus bohemicus is a true brood parasite and a member of the Bombus subgenus Psithyrus, mentioned below this as examples of insect brood parasites.

As it stands at present, the Insects section is a little confusing in this one regard.

Also, all cuckoo bumblebees are members of the subgenus Psithyrus. Perhaps the sentence beginning "Cuckoo bumblebees in the subgenus Psithyrus..." should be amended to simply read, "Cuckoo bumblebees", linking to the Psithyrus page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.112.85 (talk) 20:05, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Done. Dyanega (talk) 23:30, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Vandalism ?

Has there been vandalism of this article ? The eggshell thickness sounds rather unlikely in the "Adaptations for parasitism" section:

". . . the eggs of cuckoos are about 23.2 millimetres (0.91 in) thicker than those the great reed warbler."

  Darkman101 (talk) 09:02, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Darkman101 I looked at the ref (pg 180, table 1) and determined that it was an error in units. It should have been μm, not mm. Thanks for catching. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:28, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Typo

Shiny cowbird instead of Shyny cowbird in image example BennDuR (talk) 20:12, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

 Done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 21:41, 5 August 2020 (UTC)