Yang Canchao, Wang Longwu, Liang Wei, Møller Anders P
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Tropical Plant and Animal Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China.
School of Life Sciences, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550001, China.
Behav Processes. 2016 Apr;125:85-8. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2016.02.010. Epub 2016 Feb 19.
Although many biological phenotypes are generally regarded as consistent across the distributional range of a species, some traits such as egg discrimination behavior have been shown to display extensive intraspecific variation as a response to selection from brood parasitism. We investigated the egg recognition ability in an Asian population of tree sparrows (Passer montanus), and we compared that with the ability to recognize and reject intraspecific foreign eggs in a population in Europe. Extensive artificial parasitism with model eggs and real eggs of eight sympatric birds that vary in background color and markings revealed that egg recognition capacity is completely absent in this Asian population of tree sparrows. This result contrasts with previous studies in European populations showing extensive ability for discriminating between own and foreign eggs. Different evolutionary equilibria or differences in the risk of conspecific parasitism may account for differences in egg discrimination ability between European and Asian populations of tree sparrows.
尽管许多生物学表型通常被认为在一个物种的分布范围内是一致的，但一些特征，如卵识别行为，已被证明会表现出广泛的种内变异，作为对巢寄生选择的一种反应。我们研究了亚洲树麻雀（Passer montanus）种群的卵识别能力，并将其与欧洲一个种群识别和拒绝种内外来卵的能力进行了比较。用八个背景颜色和斑纹不同的同域鸟类的模型卵和真卵进行广泛的人工寄生实验，结果显示，这个亚洲树麻雀种群完全没有卵识别能力。这一结果与之前对欧洲种群的研究形成对比，之前的研究表明欧洲种群有很强的辨别自己的卵和外来卵的能力。欧洲和亚洲树麻雀种群在卵识别能力上的差异可能是由不同的进化平衡或种内寄生风险的差异造成的。
