Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2013 Jun 12;9(4):20130443. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0443. Print 2013 Aug 23.
Arms races between brood parasites and their hosts provide model systems for studying the evolutionary repercussions of species interactions. However, how naive hosts identify brood parasites as enemies remains poorly understood, despite its ecological and evolutionary significance. Here, we investigate whether young, cuckoo-naive superb fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus, can learn to recognize cuckoos as a threat through social transmission of information. Naive individuals were initially unresponsive to a cuckoo specimen, but after observing conspecifics mob a cuckoo, they made more whining and mobbing alarm calls, and spent more time physically mobbing the cuckoo. This is the first direct evidence that naive hosts can learn to identify brood parasites as enemies via social learning.
育雏寄生与宿主之间的军备竞赛为研究物种相互作用的进化后果提供了模型系统。然而，尽管这具有生态和进化意义，但对于幼稚的宿主如何识别育雏寄生者作为敌人，我们仍知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了年轻的、对杜鹃一无所知的极乐鸟（Malurus cyaneus）是否可以通过信息的社会传递来学习将杜鹃识别为威胁。幼稚的个体最初对杜鹃标本没有反应，但是在观察到同种个体围攻杜鹃之后，它们发出了更多的呜呜声和围攻警报，并且更多时间地实际围攻杜鹃。这是第一个直接证据表明，幼稚的宿主可以通过社会学习来识别育雏寄生者作为敌人。
