Publications by authors named "Keita D Tanaka"
Article Synopsis
- Research shows that avian brood parasites and their hosts influence each other’s physical traits over time, but the effect on nestling diversification is less understood.
- A study of Australia, New Caledonia, and New Zealand's shining bronze-cuckoo reveals that its nestlings mimic their host species, leading to the emergence of different subspecies.
- Notably, while many host birds have weak defenses against cuckoo eggs, some are quite effective at recognizing and ejecting cuckoo nestlings, highlighting varying evolutionary stages in this ongoing arms race.
Article Synopsis
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Article Synopsis
- Nestling rejection is a unique but uncommon defense mechanism against brood parasitism, contrasted with more frequent egg rejection practices.
- The study focused on the fan-tailed gerygone, which accepts nonmimetic eggs from the shining bronze-cuckoo but expels mimetic nestlings, examining how egg and nestling discrimination occurs.
- Findings revealed that gerygones rejected eggs only based on size and that nestling rejection relied more on auditory and visual cues rather than color, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach in exploring host discrimination mechanisms.
Mimicry by avian brood parasites favours uniformity over variation within a breeding attempt as host defence against parasitism. In a cuckoo-host system from New Caledonia, the arms race resulted in both host (Gerygone flavolateralis) and parasite (Chalcites lucidus) having nestlings of two discrete skin colour phenotypes, bright and dark. In our study sites, host nestlings occurred in monomorphic and polymorphic broods, whereas cuckoo nestlings only occurred in the bright morph.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtra-pair copulation can increase genetic diversity and offspring fitness. However, it may also increase intra-nest variability in avian hosts of brood parasites, which can decrease the discrimination ability of host parents towards the parasite. In New Caledonia, the Fan-tailed Gerygone (Gerygone flavolateralis), which is parasitized by the Shining Bronze-cuckoo (Chalcites lucidus), has two nestling morphs, dark and bright, that can occur in monomorphic and polymorphic broods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVirulence of avian brood parasites can trigger a coevolutionary arms race, which favours rejection of parasitic eggs or chicks by host parents, and in turn leads to mimicry in parasite eggs or chicks [1-7]. The appearance of host offspring is critical to enable host parents to detect parasites. Thus, increasing accuracy of parasites' mimicry can favour a newly emerged host morph to escape parasites' mimicry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNestlings of some brood parasitic birds evict hosts' eggs and young soon after hatching, thereby avoiding discrimination by hosts while monopolizing parental care. Eviction carries a cost, however, because lone parasitic nestlings attract a reduced provisioning rate. Here we describe a form of visual signaling used by the evicting Horsfield's hawk-cuckoo (Cuculus fugax) to obtain sufficient food.
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