Towards untangling the 'antennal grabbing' phenomenon in mating cuckoo bees
One can seldom spot a cuckoo bee, whose peculiar kleptoparasitic behaviour includes laying eggs in the nests of a certain host bee species, let alone a couple mating.
Aug 27, 2018
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New research finds cuckoos change their egg sizes according to their host
An international study into the sizes of oriental cuckoo eggs compared with the egg sizes of their four corresponding hosts in Russia has shown, for the first time, that cuckoos vary the size of their eggs to match those ...
Brood parasitism in fish
There are other animals besides the cuckoo who smuggle their offspring into another animal's nest. The synodontis multipunctatus, which lives in Lake Tanganyika in Africa and is better known as the cuckoo catfish, is just ...
Researchers identify 15 new species of stealthy cuckoo bees
Cuckoo bees sneakily lay their eggs in the nests of other bee species, after which their newly hatched prodigies kill the host egg or larva, and then feed on the stored pollen. The host, a solitary bee, never knows anything ...
Russian cuckoo invasion spells trouble for Alaskan birds, study finds
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 ...
A new hope: One of North America's rarest bees has its known range greatly expanded
The Macropis Cuckoo Bee is one of the rarest bees in North America, partly because of its specialized ecological associations. It is a nest parasite of oil-collecting bees of the genus Macropis which, in turn, are dependent ...
Scientists expose true extent of cuckoo's cunning
The common cuckoo, notorious for evading parental duty by hiding her eggs in the nests of other brooding birds, is even more devious than previously thought, scientists revealed on Monday.
Common Cuckoos can distinguish the calls of their neighbors from a stranger's
Male cuckoos appear to have a unique call that makes them distinguishable to and from other males. A new study appearing in Animal Behaviour shows that an individual cuckoo call may determine how a male responds to an interloper ...
Host birds only tolerate parasitic cuckoo eggs in their nests when they fear retaliation
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 ...
Scientists call on public to look and listen out for cuckoos
Devon residents are being asked to record cuckoos seen or heard in the county as part of an ongoing conservation project that has received 2,000 reports of the species by the general public in the last two years.
