Dissertation Research: Species Recognition in Brood Parasites

学位论文研究：幼虫的物种识别教师赞助人：保罗·W·谢尔曼学生：马克·E·豪伯大多数鸟类和哺乳动物都是在家庭成员中饲养的。因此，了解兄弟姐妹和父母的特征会导致适当的物种识别。因为幼体寄生虫在其他鸟类的巢中产卵，寄养父母的印记会导致他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起来的？这个项目调查了褐头牛鸟(Molothrus Ater)的物种识别，这是北美常见的一种孵化寄生鸟。通过对自然寄生鸟巢的连续观察、选择性地移除雌性寄生虫以限制初出茅庐的牛鸟的早期社会经验、DNA亲子分析、寄生后代发育过程中同种发声的回放以及人工饲养幼鸟的羽毛操作，本研究评估了社会学习和自我参照表型匹配在牛鸟物种识别发展中的相对重要性。这项研究将对物种识别、亲属识别和配偶识别机制的总体研究提供参考。此外，由于物种识别是大多数宿主-寄生虫系统生物学中鲜为人知的方面，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.