Abstract
The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) is well known for conspecific brood parasitism in Europe, and there it is capable of recognizing and rejecting non-mimetic foreign eggs and even mimetic conspecific eggs. Here, we tested the egg rejection of an Asian population of house sparrows by using model eggs, sparrow eggs painted red and sparrow eggs with added brown spots, of which their mimicry to sparrow eggs were quantified by granularity analysis based on avian vision. Surprisingly, house sparrows in Asia did not show any egg rejection. We suggest that the evolutionary equilibrium theory, which was first proposed to explain the absence of egg rejection in some hosts of interspecific brood parasites, may explain the deficiency of egg rejection in house sparrows, as a result of trade-offs between the high rejection costs and the costs of raising conspecific foreign chicks.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Prof. Manuel Soler, Associate Editor, and four anonymous reviewers for providing constructive and valuable comments that significantly improved the quality of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31260514 to CY, 31272328 and 31472013 to WL), and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0761 to CY).
Ethical standards
The experiments comply with the current laws of China, where they were performed. Fieldwork was carried out under the permission from Fukang National Field Scientific Observation and Research Station, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Experimental procedures were in agreement with the Animal Research Ethics Committee of Hainan Provincial Education Centre for Ecology and Environment, Hainan Normal University.
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We declare that all authors have no conflict of interest.
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Yang, C., Hu, Y., Ma, M. et al. Absence of egg rejection in an Asian population of house sparrow (Passer domesticus), a conspecific brood parasite in Europe. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 69, 723–727 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1886-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1886-0