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A test of the nest sanitation hypothesis for the evolution of foreign egg rejection in an avian brood parasite rejecter host species

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Abstract

Hosts of avian brood parasites have evolved diverse defenses to avoid the costs associated with raising brood parasite nestlings. In egg ejection, the host recognizes and removes foreign eggs laid in its nest. Nest sanitation, a behavior similar in motor pattern to egg ejection, has been proposed repeatedly as a potential pre-adaptation to egg ejection. Here, we separately placed blue 3D-printed, brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) eggs known to elicit interindividual variation in ejection responses and semi-natural leaves into American robins’ (Turdus migratorius) nests to test proximate predictions that (1) rejecter hosts should sanitize debris from nests more frequently and consistently than accepter hosts and (2) hosts that sanitize their nests of debris prior to the presentation of a foreign egg will be more likely to eject the foreign egg. Egg ejection responses were highly repeatable within individuals yet variable between them, but were not influenced by prior exposure to debris, nor related to sanitation tendencies as a whole, because nearly all individuals sanitized their nests. Additionally, we collected published data for eight different host species to test for a potential positive correlation between sanitation and egg ejection. We found no significant correlation between nest sanitation and egg ejection rates; however, our comparative analysis was limited to a sample size of 8, and we advise that more data from additional species are necessary to properly address interspecific tests of the pre-adaptation hypothesis. In lack of support for the nest sanitation hypothesis, our study suggests that, within individuals, foreign egg ejection is distinct from nest sanitation tendencies, and sanitation and foreign egg ejection may not correlate across species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Moore’s Tree Farm; Seifert’s Tree Farm; and Country Arbors Nursery of Champaign-Urbana, IL, for generously providing access to their farms as field sites for this study and Matt Louder for facilitating the preliminary field work. We also thank Thomas A. Gavin, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, for the help with editing the English in this paper. Lastly, we thank Professor David Lahti of Queen’s College for the thoughtful comments and suggestions which improved the manuscript. Funding for this project was provided by the Human Frontier Science Program, the National Academies Keck Future Initiative program, and the Animal Behavior and Conservation program of Hunter College. A. Luro was supported in part by the Department of Animal Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, fellowship during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Animal Behavior and Conservation Program, Department of Psychology, Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, 10065, USA

    Alec B. Luro & Mark E. Hauber

  2. Department of Animal Biology, School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, 61801, USA

    Alec B. Luro & Mark E. Hauber

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  1. Alec B. Luro
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Correspondence to Alec B. Luro.

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All experiments and procedures of this study were IUACUC approved (MH 2/16-T3) and complied with US laws.

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Communicated by: Pamela C. Rasmussen

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Luro, A.B., Hauber, M.E. A test of the nest sanitation hypothesis for the evolution of foreign egg rejection in an avian brood parasite rejecter host species. Sci Nat 104, 14 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-017-1446-8

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