Dissertation Research: Species Recognition in Brood Parasites

题目：博士论文研究：种识别在育雏寄生虫学院主办：保罗W。谢尔曼：马克E。大多数鸟类和哺乳动物都是在家庭成员中饲养的。因此，学习兄弟姐妹和父母的特征会导致适当的物种识别。因为幼虫寄生虫在其他鸟类的巢中产卵，养父母的印记会导致它们的后代错误地识别自己的物种。寄生虫的认知能力是如何发展的？本计画探讨北美常见的一种寄生鸟-棕头燕八哥的物种辨识。通过结合连续观察自然寄生的巢，选择性地去除雌性寄生虫，以限制早期的社会经验的羽翼未丰的燕八哥，DNA亲子分析，回放同种发声整个寄生后代的发展，和羽毛的手饲养的青少年，本研究评估的相对重要性，社会学习和自我指的表型匹配的燕八哥物种识别的发展。这项研究将提供信息的物种，亲属和配偶识别机制的研究一般。此外，由于物种识别是大多数宿主-寄生虫系统生物学的一个鲜为人知的方面，这项工作的发现也将增加我们对宿主和自我识别的理解。

TITLE: Dissertation Research: Species Recognition in Brood Parasites FACULTY SPONSOR: Paul W. Sherman STUDENT: Mark E. Hauber Most birds and mammals are reared among family members. Therefore, learning the characteristics of siblings and parents results in appropriate species recognition. Because brood parasites lay their eggs in nests of other birds, imprinting on foster parents would lead their young to misidentify their own species. How does recognition develop in parasites? This project investigates species recognition in the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater), a common brood parasitic bird of North America. By combining continuous observations at naturally parasitized nests, selective removals of female parasites to limit early social experience of fledgling cowbirds, DNA parentage analyses, playbacks of conspecific vocalizations throughout parasitic offspring development, and plumage manipulations of hand-reared juveniles, this study evaluates the relative importance of social learning and self-referent phenotype matching in the development of cowbird species recognition. This study will be informative for research on species-, kin-, and mate-recognition mechanisms in general. In addition, because species recognition is a poorly known aspect of the biology of most host-parasite systems, findings from this work will also increase our understanding of host- and self-recognition.