10
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Embryonic learning of vocal passwords in superb fairy-wrens reveals intruder cuckoo nestlings.

      Current Biology
      Adaptation, Physiological, Animals, Cues, Discrimination Learning, Female, Nesting Behavior, Songbirds, embryology, physiology, Species Specificity, Vocalization, Animal

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          How do parents recognize their offspring when the cost of making a recognition error is high? Avian brood parasite-host systems have been used to address this question because of the high cost of parasitism to host fitness. We discovered that superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) females call to their eggs, and upon hatching, nestlings produce begging calls with key elements from their mother's "incubation call." Cross-fostering experiments showed highest similarity between foster mother and nestling calls, intermediate similarity with genetic mothers, and least similarity with parasitic Horsfield's bronze-cuckoo (Chalcites basalis) nestlings. Playback experiments showed that adults respond to the begging calls of offspring hatched in their own nest and respond less to calls of other wren or cuckoo nestlings. We conclude that wrens use a parent-specific password learned embryonically to shape call similarity with their own young and thereby detect foreign cuckoo nestlings. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          23142041
          10.1016/j.cub.2012.09.025

          Chemistry
          Adaptation, Physiological,Animals,Cues,Discrimination Learning,Female,Nesting Behavior,Songbirds,embryology,physiology,Species Specificity,Vocalization, Animal

          Comments

          Comment on this article