ArticleDie Naturwissenschaften2018
Keeping eggs warm: thermal and developmental advantages for parasitic cuckoos of laying unusually thick-shelled eggs.
Article in Die Naturwissenschaften, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Egg shape in an obligate brood parasite stabilizes temperature variation during incubation.Current zoology · 2025Article
- Brood parasitism and host-parasite relationships: Cuckoos adapt to reduce the time of hatching ahead of host nestlings by increasing egg thickness.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2024Article
- Thicker eggshells are not predicted by host egg ejection behaviour in four species of Australian cuckoo.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Embryo movement is more frequent in avian brood parasites than birds with parental reproductive strategies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- How much calcium to shell out? Eggshell calcium carbonate content is greater in birds with thinner shells, larger clutches and longer lifespans.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Egg laying behavior of common cuckoos (Zoological research · 2020Article
- Cuckoos use host egg number to choose host nests for parasitism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The global distribution of avian eggshell colours suggest a thermoregulatory benefit of darker pigmentation.Nature ecology & evolution · 2020Article
- Adaptive responses of the embryos of birds and reptiles to spatial and temporal variations in nest temperatures.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Review
- How to Make a Mimic? Brood Parasitic Striped Cuckoo Eggs Match Host Shell Color but Not Pigment Concentrations.Journal of chemical ecology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Obligate brood parasites have evolved unusually thick-shelled eggs, which are hypothesized to possess a variety of functions such as resistance to puncture ejection by their hosts. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that obligate brood parasites lay unusually thick-shelled eggs to retain more heat for the developing embryo and thus contribute to early hatching of parasite eggs. By doing so, we used an infrared thermal imaging system as a non-invasive method to quantify the temperature of eggshells of common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) and their Oriental reed warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) hosts in an experiment that artificially altered the duration of incubation. Our results showed that cuckoo eggshells had higher temperature than host eggs during incubation, but also less fluctuations in temperature during incubation disturbance. Therefore, there was a thermal and hence a developmental advantage for brood parasitic cuckoos of laying thick-shelled eggs, providing another possible explanation for the unusually thick-shelled eggs of obligate brood parasites and earlier hatching of cuckoo eggs compared to those of the host.
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Registered trials
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