Abstract
Brood parasitism is costly to hosts, and, therefore, a number of anti-parasite defenses have evolved. Surprisingly, several high-quality hosts such as martins and swallows are rarely parasitized, raising the question why that is the case. We hypothesize that martins and swallows may avoid parasitism by breeding in close association with humans, and by building nests that are inaccessible for common cuckoos Cuculus canorus and other brood parasites. Here we show using egg rejection experiments that red-rumped swallows Hirundo daurica, house martins Delichon urbica, and barn swallows Hirundo rustica in Europe do not reject foreign eggs placed in their nests, while barn swallows in China often reject foreign eggs. The frequency of parasitism of barn swallows in Europe was significantly higher than in house martins relative to the expectation based on the abundance of the two species. Barn swallows in Europe that were parasitized by cuckoos more often placed their nests outdoors than expected by chance, suggesting that avoidance of cuckoo parasitism can be achieved by breeding indoors. These findings suggest that barn swallows in China have gained egg rejection behavior because they cannot avoid parasitism when breeding outdoors.
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Acknowledgments
W. C. Årestrup and P. Tryjanowski kindly provided the unpublished information. Numerous colleagues and institutions provided invaluable help in creating the databases on cuckoo parasitism of hirundines. We thank F. Li and Zalong National Reserve for support and permission to carry out this study, and L. Liu, S. Cai, H. Wu, W. Lv, M. Chen, and S. Li for their assistance with field work. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 31071938 and 31272328 to WL, 31101646 and 31260514 to CY), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-10-0111 to WL), and Key Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (No. 212136 to CY). T. Grim and an anonymous reviewer provided helpful comments. The studies reported in this paper conform to the laws in the countries in which they were performed.
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Liang, W., Yang, C., Wang, L. et al. Avoiding parasitism by breeding indoors: cuckoo parasitism of hirundines and rejection of eggs. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67, 913–918 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1514-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1514-9