Brood parasitic birds lay their eggs in the nests of others, sparing themselves the expense of rearing their own young. The resulting coevolutionary arms race includes sophisticated defenses by hosts ...

Parenting can be lots of work for a bird: all that flying back and forth transporting grubs and insects to a nest of demanding young. But some birds manage to forgo caring for their chicks — while ...

Birds separated by vast geographic distances and millions of years of evolution share a remarkably similar learned vocal warning to identify parasitic enemies near their nests, an international team ...

Cuckoos are some of nature’s most practiced—and successful—con artists. Many species from this large family of birds are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and outsource ...

Birds worldwide share a unique alarm call to warn each other about brood parasites like cuckoos. This vocalization, a blend of instinct and learned behavior, has been observed across 21 species ...

European cuckoos lay very different eggs depending on the host species. Genetic analyses have revealed how this adaptation is inherited without leading to speciation.

It was nature’s version of an Easter egg hunt. Dr. Claire Spottiswoode, a professor at the University of Cape Town who studies avian (bird) brood parasites, was working in Zambia to learn more about ...

DNA has been known to jump from one species to another in a phenomenon called horizontal transfer. Sometimes, the DNA of parasites will jump into the genomes of their hosts, and evidence of this ...

Avian blood parasites, predominantly comprising haemosporidians such as Plasmodium, Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon, have emerged as significant factors influencing bird health, survival and ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Birds separated by vast geographic distances and millions of years of evolution share a remarkably similar learned vocal warning to identify parasitic enemies near their nests, an ...