Abstract
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the mechanisms responsible for maintenance of host-specific gentes in the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). Some of them expect that when adult cuckoos return to lay their eggs to their natal site (natal philopatry hypothesis) or habitat in which they were reared (habitat-imprinting hypothesis), there is a higher probability of finding nests of the host species by which they were reared. Since published evidence is ambiguous, we here evaluate the natal philopatry and habitat-imprinting hypotheses using information on habitat homogeneity and cross-continental long-term ringing data. We found no evidence for the natal philopatry hypothesis—instead of returning to their natal site, juvenile cuckoos exhibited longer dispersal movements than adults, and the difference was even larger in comparison with a wide array of cuckoo host species. On the contrary, we found support for the habitat-imprinting hypothesis—juvenile cuckoos followed similar levels of natal habitat homogeneity at 5- and 25-km scale when returning to breed in the next years. Our results suggest that preference for the particular habitat structures may help cuckoos to find appropriate hosts.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from EURING. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for this study. Data are available from the authors with the permission of EURING.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING) which made the recovery data available through the EURING Data Bank and to the many ringers and ringing scheme staff who have gathered and prepared the data. Wesley Hochachka and two anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments.
Funding
This study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (project 17-12262S) and by the Institutional Research Plan (RVO: 68081766).
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Koleček, J., Procházka, P., Brlík, V. et al. Cross-continental test of natal philopatry and habitat-imprinting hypotheses to explain host specificity in an obligate brood parasite. Sci Nat 107, 12 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-020-1667-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-020-1667-0