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Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes.
In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other's evolution through the process of natural selection. The term sometimes is used for two traits in the same species affecting each other's evolution, as well as gene-culture coevolution.
Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes. The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals, and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separated as distinct families, the Centropodidae and Crotophagidae, respectively. The cuckoo order Cuculiformes is one of three that make up the Otidimorphae, the other two being the turacos and the bustards. The family Cuculidae contains 150 species, which are divided into 33 genera.
The parrotbills are a family, Paradoxornithidae, of passerine birds that are primarily native to East and Southeast Asia, though feral populations exist elsewhere. They are generally small, long-tailed birds that inhabit reedbeds and similar habitats. They feed mainly on seeds, e.g. of grasses, to which their bill, as the name implies, is well-adapted. Living in tropical to southern temperate climates, they are usually non-migratory.
The brown-headed cowbird is a small, obligate brood parasitic icterid native to temperate and subtropical North America. It is a permanent resident in the southern parts of its range; northern birds migrate to the southern United States and Mexico in winter, returning to their summer habitat around March or April.
The Asian koel is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, the Cuculiformes. It is found in the Indian Subcontinent, China, and Southeast Asia. It forms a superspecies with the closely related black-billed koels, and Pacific koels which are sometimes treated as subspecies. The Asian koel like many of its related cuckoo kin is a brood parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of crows and other hosts, who raise its young. They are unusual among the cuckoos in being largely frugivorous as adults. The name koel is echoic in origin with several language variants. The bird is a widely used symbol in Indian and Nepali poetry.
Brood parasitism is a subclass of parasitism and phenomenon and behavioural pattern of certain animals, brood parasites, that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its own, usually using egg mimicry, with eggs that resemble the host's.
Cowbirds are birds belonging to the genus Molothrus in the family Icteridae. They are of New World origin, and are obligate brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species.
The term cuckoo bee is used for a variety of different bee lineages which have evolved the kleptoparasitic behaviour of laying their eggs in the nests of other bees, reminiscent of the behavior of cuckoo birds. The name is perhaps best applied to the apid subfamily Nomadinae, but is commonly used in Europe to mean bumblebees Bombus subgenus Psithyrus. Females of cuckoo bees are easy to recognize in almost all cases, as they lack pollen-collecting structures and do not construct their own nests. They often have reduced body hair, abnormally thick and/or heavily sculptured exoskeleton, and saber-like mandibles, although this is not universally true; other less visible changes are also common.
An obligate parasite or holoparasite is a parasitic organism that cannot complete its life-cycle without exploiting a suitable host. If an obligate parasite cannot obtain a host it will fail to reproduce. This is opposed to a facultative parasite, which can act as a parasite but does not rely on its host to continue its life-cycle. Obligate parasites have evolved a variety of parasitic strategies to exploit their hosts. Holoparasites and some hemiparasites are obligate.
Piaya is a small genus of relatively large and long-tailed cuckoos, which occur in Mexico, Central America and South America. The two species in taxonomic order are:
Habitat selection hypothesis is one of several hypotheses that attempt to explain the mechanisms of brood parasite host selection in cuckoos. Cuckoos are not the only brood parasites, however the behavior is more rare in other groups of birds, including ducks, weavers, and cowbirds.
Horsfield's bronze cuckoo is a small cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. Its size averages 22g and is distinguished by its green and bronze iridescent colouring on its back and incomplete brown barring from neck to tail. Horsfield's bronze cuckoo can be destiguished from other bronze cuckoos by its white eyebrow and brown eye stripe. The Horsfield's bronze cuckoo is common throughout Australia preferring the drier open woodlands away from forested areas.
The pavonine cuckoo is a Neotropical cuckoo with a long graduated tail and a short crest. It is one of three species of Neotropical cuckoo which are known to be brood parasites.
The cuckoo-finch, also known as the parasitic weaver or cuckoo weaver, is a small passerine bird now placed in the family Viduidae with the indigobirds and whydahs. It occurs in grassland in Africa south of the Sahara. The male is mainly yellow and green while the female is buff with dark streaks. The eggs are laid in the nests of other birds.
The screaming cowbird is an obligate brood parasite belonging to the family Icteridae and is found in South America. It is also known commonly as the short billed cowbird.
Phengaris rebeli, common name mountain Alcon blue, is a species of butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. It was first found and described in Styria, Austria, on Mount Hochschwab around 1700. Although it was initially classified as a subspecies of P. alcon, a European researcher, Lucien A. Berger, designated it as a separate species in 1946. Genetic similarities between P. rebeli and P. alcon have led many researchers to argue that the two are the same species and differences are due to intraspecific variation.
Egg tossing or egg destruction is a behavior observed in some species of birds where one individual removes an egg from the communal nest. This is related to infanticide, where parents kill their own or other's offspring. Egg tossing is observed in avian species, most commonly females, who are involved with cooperative breeding or brood parasitism. Among colonial non-co-nesting birds, egg-tossing is observed to be performed by an individual of the same species, and, in the case of brood parasites, this behavior is done by either the same or different species. The behavior of egg tossing offers its advantages and disadvantages to both the actor and recipient.
Bombus bohemicus, also known as the gypsy's cuckoo bumblebee, is a species of socially parasitic cuckoo bumblebee found in most of Europe with the exception of the southern Iberian Peninsula and Iceland. B. bohemicus practices inquilinism, or brood parasitism, of other bumblebee species. B. bohemicus is a generalist parasite, successfully invading several species from genus Bombus. The invading queen mimics the host nest's chemical signals, allowing her to assume a reproductively dominant role as well as manipulation of host worker fertility and behavior.
Polistes semenowi is a species of paper wasp in the genus Polistes that is found in southeastern and southern central Europe, as well as central Asia, and was until 2017 erroneously known by the name Polistes sulcifer, while a different species was incorrectly believed to represent P. semenowi. It is one of only four known Polistes obligate social parasites, sometimes referred to as "cuckoo paper wasps", and its host is the congeneric species Polistes dominula. As an obligate social parasite, this species has lost the ability to build nests, and relies on the host workers to raise its brood. P. semenowi females use brute force, followed by chemical mimicry in order to successfully usurp a host nest and take over as the queen.
References
- ↑ "Is There A Mafia System Among Birds?". Science ABC. 2022-07-30. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ↑ "Fear of the cuckoo mafia". www.mpg.de. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ↑ "Meet the Cuckoo Mafia". Discover Magazine. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ↑ Abou Chakra, Maria; Hilbe, Christian; Traulsen, Arne (2014-03-04). "Plastic behaviors in hosts promote the emergence of retaliatory parasites". Scientific Reports. 4 (1): 4251. Bibcode:2014NatSR...4E4251C. doi:10.1038/srep04251. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 3940972 . PMID 24589512. S2CID 5733384.
- ↑ Hauber, Mark E. (2014). "Mafia or Farmer? Coevolutionary consequences of retaliation and farming as pr farming as predator strategies upon host nests by avian brood parasites".
- ↑ Abou Chakra, M.; Hilbe, C.; Traulsen, A. (2016). "Coevolutionary interactions between farmers and mafia induce host acceptance of avian brood parasites". Royal Society Open Science. 3 (5): 160036. Bibcode:2016RSOS....360036C. doi:10.1098/rsos.160036. PMC 4892445 . PMID 27293783.
- ↑ Soler, M.; Pérez-Contreras, T.; Soler, J. J. (2017), Soler, Manuel (ed.), "Brood Parasites as Predators: Farming and Mafia Strategies", Avian Brood Parasitism: Behaviour, Ecology, Evolution and Coevolution, Fascinating Life Sciences, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 271–286, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73138-4_15, ISBN 978-3-319-73138-4 , retrieved 2023-01-20
- ↑ "Cuckoo mafia: Host birds only tolerate parasitic eggs in their nests when they fear retaliation". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- Hoover, Jeffrey P.; Robinson, Scott K. (2007-03-13). "Retaliatory mafia behavior by a parasitic cowbird favors host acceptance of parasitic eggs". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (11): 4479–4483. doi:10.1073/pnas.0609710104. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 1838626. PMID 17360549.
- "Cuckoos Use Mafia Tactics, And They Work". IFLScience. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/283374
- https://books.google.com/books?id=U3ZZDwAAQBAJ&dq=mafia+hypothesis&pg=PA280
- https://journal.afonet.org/vol93/iss4/art4/