ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2017
Egg discrimination along a gradient of natural variation in eggshell coloration.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Categorical identity signatures can reduce host error rates during brood parasitism.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Geographical Variation in Egg Rejection by Azure-Winged Magpies (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Host personality and seasonal parasitism risk do not account for egg rejection behavior in the azure-winged magpie.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2025Article
- Egg shape and color mediate acceptance thresholds in diverse avian host species with different rates of antiparasitic egg rejection.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Breeding stages affect egg recognition in azure-winged magpies (Cyanopica cyanus).Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Attractive egg color? Red eggs facilitate egg acceptance in a cavity-nesting host.Current zoology · 2024Article
- Eggshell spots are an important cue for the egg retrieval behavior in two tit species.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Decision rules for egg-color-based rejection by two cavity-nesting hosts of the brown-headed cowbird.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- Defense behavior of two closely related but geographically distant host species against cuckoo parasitism: A next test for the parallel coevolution.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Revealing the roles of egg darkness and nest similarity for a cryptic parasite egg versus host's cognition: an alternate coevolutionary trajectory.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- A review of the cues used for rejecting foreign eggs from the nest by the Eurasian blackbird (Ecology and evolution · 2022Review
- Interclutch variability in egg characteristics in two species of rail: Is maternal identity encoded in eggshell patterns?PloS one · 2022Article
- Ecophysiology of egg rejection in hosts of avian brood parasites: new insights and perspectives.Current zoology · 2021Article
- Could diffuse coevolution explain the generic eggshell color of the brown-headed cowbird?Current zoology · 2021Article
- Host and brood parasite coevolutionary interactions covary with comparative patterns of the avian visual system.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Egg recognition: The importance of quantifying multiple repeatable features as visual identity signals.PloS one · 2021Article
- The limits of egg recognition: testing acceptance thresholds of American robins in response to decreasingly egg-shaped objects in the nest.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Spatial variation in egg polymorphism among cuckoo hosts across 4 continents.Current zoology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Accurate recognition of salient cues is critical for adaptive responses, but the underlying sensory and cognitive processes are often poorly understood. For example, hosts of avian brood parasites have long been assumed to reject foreign eggs from their nests based on the total degree of dissimilarity in colour to their own eggs, regardless of the foreign eggs' colours. We tested hosts' responses to gradients of natural (blue-green to brown) and artificial (green to purple) egg colours, and demonstrate that hosts base rejection decisions on both the direction and degree of colour dissimilarity along the natural, but not artificial, gradient of egg colours. Hosts rejected brown eggs and accepted blue-green eggs along the natural egg colour gradient, irrespective of the total perceived dissimilarity from their own egg's colour. By contrast, their responses did not vary along the artificial colour gradient. Our results demonstrate that egg recognition is specifically tuned to the natural gradient of avian eggshell colour and suggest a novel decision rule. These results highlight the importance of considering sensory reception and decision rules when studying perception, and illustrate that our understanding of recognition processes benefits from examining natural variation in phenotypes.
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