Coevolution of acoustical communication between obligate avian brood parasites and their hosts
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Avian Research Open Access
REVIEW
Coevolution of acoustical communication between obligate avian brood parasites and their hosts Jiaojiao Wang, Qihong Li and Canchao Yang*
Abstract The mutually antagonistic processes producing adaptations and counter-adaptations in avian brood parasites and their hosts provide a model system for the study of coevolution; this topic has long been an area of focus in ornithology and evolutionary biology. Although there is an extensive body of literature dealing with avian brood parasitism, few empirical studies have considered the effects of the coevolutionary processes associated with brood parasitism on the acoustic characteristics of parent–offspring communication. Under the strong selection pressures associated with brood parasitism, parasitic birds may, for instance, produce deceptive songs. The host may in turn evolve the ability to recognize these sounds as deceptive. At present, the mechanisms underlying the different competitive strategies employed by hosts and parasitic birds remain unclear. Here, we reviewed previous studies that investigated acoustic traits in scenarios of brood parasitism, highlighting possible adaptive functions. Using a meta-analysis, we identified no heterogeneity among studies of begging call adaptations in parasitic nestlings. However, our results may have been affected by the small number of applicable papers available for analysis. Our meta-analysis also suggested that studies of acoustic communication and transmission in adult hosts were highly heterogenous, suggesting that research methods were inconsistent among studies. Finally, we identified knowledge gaps and proposed several lines of future research. Keywords: Acoustic communication, Brood parasitism, Coevolution, Parasitic adaptations, Anti-parasitic adaptations Background Birdsongs, which contain important biological information, provide an important means of communication for birds and play a very important role in all aspects of bird life history (Catchpole and Slater 2008). Birdsong is divided into songs and calls. The main functions of songs are to attract mates and defend territories (Catchpole and Slater 2008), while calls, which are relatively widely used, are used not only to defend territories, but also for other types of communication, including announcing food availability and begging for food (Marler 2004).
*Correspondence: [email protected] College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China
Avian brood parasitism is a special reproductive behavior, in which brood parasites lay eggs in the nests of other birds (hosts), thereby transferring some of the reproductive cost to the hosts (Davies 2011; Soler 2014). Successful parasitism carries a greater cost for hosts than nest predation because the parasitized hosts must invest time and effort caring for the parasitic egg; the parasitized host thus has fewer opportunities to re-nest and reproduce than when a nest predator consumes eggs or young directly (Rothstein 1990; Yang et al. 2019). Therefore,
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