Researchers at the University of Illinois have shown through a multi-year study that cowbirds (Molothrus ater) conform to Bateman's Principle, which holds that reproductive success is greater in males than in females when ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 30, 2019
0
22
Evolutionary adaptations resulting from cultural change, such as humans being able to consume dairy products, are more widespread in nature than previously thought.
Evolution
Jun 3, 2019
0
436
Temnothorax americanus is a slavemaking ant found in northeastern America. These tiny social insects neither rear their offspring nor search for food themselves. Instead, they raid nests of another ant species, Temnothorax ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 28, 2019
0
40
Common cuckoos and oriental cuckoos in eastern Russia appear to be expanding their breeding range into western Alaska, where songbirds are naive to the cuckoos' wily ways, researchers report. A new study suggests the North ...
Ecology
May 7, 2018
2
53
Alberta's oil and gas infrastructure is providing a great living to the brown-headed cowbird, a bird species that tricks other songbirds into raising its young, a new University of Manitoba study finds.
Plants & Animals
Jul 19, 2017
0
118
If you are raised by other species, then how do you know who you are? Although heterospecific foster parents rear brood parasitic brown-headed cowbird chicks, juvenile cowbirds readily recognize and affiliate with other cowbirds. ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 18, 2017
0
190
The brown-headed cowbird is nothing short of a nightmare for its hosts: If they eject the brood parasite's eggs from the nest, it punishes them by destroying their entire clutch. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute ...
Plants & Animals
May 18, 2016
0
315
Brown-headed cowbirds have a reputation for being deadbeat parents: They lay their eggs in other birds' nests and then disappear, the story goes, leaving the care and feeding of their offspring to an unwitting foster family. ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 9, 2015
0
168
Brood parasites are reproductive cheats that evolve ways of duping other birds into raising their young. Examples such as mimicry of host eggs, chicks and fledglings by brood parasitic eggs, chicks and fledglings are amongst ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 9, 2015
0
76
Old-school field work meets cutting-edge technology! For decades, researchers have been making artificial eggs out of plaster, wood, and other materials to test how birds identify and reject the eggs that invading "brood ...
Plants & Animals
May 26, 2015
0
19
