{"id":2579,"date":"2020-09-25T09:43:59","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T21:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/?p=2579"},"modified":"2020-10-23T13:44:11","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T01:44:11","slug":"easy-parenting-brood-parasites-get-someone-else-to-do-the-hard-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/ouassa\/easy-parenting-brood-parasites-get-someone-else-to-do-the-hard-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Easy Parenting: Brood Parasites Get Someone Else to Do the Hard Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>For most birds, reproduction is a life process that takes up a lot of time and energy. There are huge energetic costs to a female bird with respect to mating, egg-laying, incubating the eggs and feeding hungry chicks for many weeks or months. Some birds also migrate vast distances across land and sea before breeding can commence, using up even more time and energy. Breeding for a bird is a lot of hard work.<\/p>\n

So, if a bird found an easier way to become a successful breeder, we would expect that behaviour to be favoured by natural selection and become fixed. In about 1% of all bird species, that\u2019s exactly what has happened: it\u2019s called brood parasitism.<\/p>\n

Brood parasites are birds who have learned how to make the parenting process much easier. They still have to find a partner and mate successfully, but instead of the female bird laying her eggs in a nest that she and\/or her partner made, she stealthily lays them in the nest of another bird. Intraspecific brood parasites lay eggs in nests belonging to birds of their own species, compared to interspecific brood parasites who target other bird species.<\/p>\n

\"Common<\/a>

Common cuckoo chick in the nest of a tree pipit.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Benefits and advantages for the brood parasites:<\/strong><\/p>\n