From so simple a beginning

Evolution and Biodiversity

Month: September 2017

Useful cigarette butts

26 September 2017 /

House finch has to accept harmful side effects

House finches add cigarette butts to their nests to repel parasites

Smoked-trough cigarette filters are noxious, still some bird species add them to their nest lining, where the nicotine will repel blood-sucking parasites. They do so only when they need to, as Monserrat Suárez-Rodríguez and Constantino Macías Garcia show.

Spent cigarette filters are popular among some bird species, for instance the house finch. The birds weave cellulose fibres from discarded butts into the lining of their nests, together with more conventional soft materials such as feathers, fur or cotton. Monserrat Suárez-Rodríguez en Constantino Macías Garcia wondered whether the birds collect cellulose from butts accidently, or whether they do it to protect their young against blood-sucking parasites: lice and ticks. From earlier research, they knew that ectoparasites are repelled by nicotine, and the more smoked-through cigarette butts could be found in a nest, the smaller the amount of parasites was. Weight gain and fledging success of young increased with the proportion of cellulose from butts in the nest lining.

But they also knew that the butts are harmful to adult birds and their offspring. Next to nicotine, the butts contain more than 400 different substances such as heavy metals and insecticides, many of which are toxic. The substances may enter the birds’ bodies through the skin or the lungs.

Damage

The research team had analysed blood samples of parents and young and found nuclear abnormalities in many red blood cells (in contrast to human red blood cells, those of birds contain a nucleus with dna). The larger the proportion of butts in the nest lining, the more genotoxic damage was seen. Red blood cells live for only two to four weeks, so the damage may have no serious consequences. But other cells types likely are damaged too. The question is whether the benefits of adding cigarette butts to the nest lining – less parasites, resulting in better growth – are large enough to outweigh these costs.

The answer will depend on how much the butts are needed to fight off parasites.

Ticks

Now, experiments reveal that house finches act accordingly: they bring more smoked-through cellulose fibres from cigarette butts to their nests if parasites are present than if they’re not. The researchers removed the nest lining from a number of nests shortly after the young hatched, and added a piece of felt instead; by doing so, they removed the bulk of the tick population from the nest as well. They measured the amount of butts in the original lining. They added living ticks to some of the artificial felt nest linings, dead ticks to other linings and nothing to the remaining linings. After the young fledged, they collected the artificial linings to investigate how much butts the parents had added.

It appeared that the birds collected more butts if the researchers had added living ticks to their nest, so when it was useful to bring butts. Also birds that had brought a large amount of butts into their original nest lining, collected many butts now as well; apparently, they had experienced a high parasitic load during incubation.

The birds don’t collect cigarette butts randomly, the conclusion is, but in response to the presence of ectoparasites; so, it is a form of self-medication.

Willy van Strien

Photo: house finch male feeding young. Susan Rachlin (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0)

Sources:
Suárez-Rodríguez, M. & C. Macías Garcia, 2017. An experimental demonstration that house finches add cigarette butts in response to ectoparasites. Journal of Avian Biology, online September 1. Doi: 10.1111/jav.01324
Suárez-Rodríguez, M., R.D. Montero-Montoya & C. Macías Garcia, 2017. Anthropogenic nest materials may increase breeding costs for urban birds. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 5: 4. Doi: 10.3389/fevo.2017.00004
Suárez-Rodríguez, M. & C. Macías Garcia, 2014. There is no such a thing as a free cigarette; lining nests with discarded butts brings short-term benefits, but causes toxic damage. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 27: 2719–2726. Doi: 10.1111/jeb.12531
Suárez-Rodríguez, M., I. López-Rull & C. Macías Garcia, 2013. Incorporation of cigarette butts into nests reduces nest ectoparasite load in urban birds: new ingredients for an old recipe? Biology Letters 9: 20120931. Doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0931

Double deceit

14 September 2017 /

Female cuckoo chuckle call is embarrassing for songbirds

female cuckoo vocally mimics a hawk

By first laying her egg secretively and then giving a loud chuckle call while leaving, a female cuckoo doesn’t seem to behave in a consistent way. But her call adds to her trickery, as Jennie York and Nicholas Davis show.

A female common cuckoo that lays an egg in the nest of a songbird, for instance a reed warbler, behaves as secretly as she can, because if the intended foster parents detect her presence, they will chase her away; and if she has laid her egg already, the parents will either try to eject it or leave their clutch to start a new one somewhere else. With a cuckoo young in the nest, their own young cannot survive. So, a cuckoo visits the nest and quickly dumps her egg when the owners are away, mostly within a minute.

Vigilant

But while she tries to be unseen when laying, she gives a conspicuous chuckle call when flying away afterwards – quite different from the ‘cuck-oo’ call of the male. This seems paradoxical, as the songbirds may notice her presence after all. Why is she seeking their attention now? Jennie York en Nick Davis answer this question.

They reasoned that a calling female cuckoo may be mimicking the call of a sparrowhawk, to which it is quite similar. If the parents hear that sound, they are concerned about their safety. They become vigilant and scan the surroundings to detect the predator, and their attention is diverted away from their clutch. If they perceive a foreign egg in the clutch, they respond in the same way as when they have seen a female cuckoo on their nest: they try to eject the foreign egg or leave the clutch. But when worrying about their own safety, they will pay less attention to their clutch and may overlook a foreign egg.

Less attention

York and Davis could demonstrate that this idea is right. A few meters from reed warblers’ nests, they placed speakers and play backed the call of a male cuckoo, the call of a female cuckoo, the call of an Eurasian sparrowhawk, or the call of an Eurasian collared dove, a harmless bird; they recorded the songbirds’ responses. The results are clear: the sound of a male cuckoo or a dove elicited no response, while the call of a sparrowhawk provoked vigilance – as did the call of a female cuckoo. So, it appears that indeed a female cuckoo vocally mimics a sparrowhawk. Also great tits and blue tits, which are not exploited by cuckoos as foster parents for their young, get alarmed by the female cuckoo’s chuckle.

After such a frightening experience, reed warblers pay less attention to their clutch, as further experiments revealed. When the researchers exposed the reed warblers to the calls again, put a foreign egg in the nests and checked the nests afterwards to see whether this egg was accepted or rejected, they discovered that parents that had been exposed to the call of a sparrowhawk or a female cuckoo were less likely to notice the foreign egg than birds that had heard a male cuckoo or a collared dove.

So, a chuckling female cuckoo deceits the foster parents twice, first by secretly laying her egg and then by vocally mimicking a sparrowhawk, tricking the victims into defending themselves instead of their clutch, while in fact the clutch is in danger.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Trebol-a (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)

Source:
York, J.E. & N.B. Davies, 2017. Female cuckoo calls misdirect host defences towards the wrong enemy. Nature Ecology & Evolution, online September 4. Doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0279-3

Floral dress

7 September 2017 /

Pollinators are deceived by flower mimicking crab spider

Epidacus heterogaster sucessfully mimics a flower

The spider Epicadus heterogaster is coloured strikingly like a flower, and bees are lured by the colour to become prey, as Camila Vieira and colleagues show. Its masquerade is completed by a conspicuous abdomen, mimicking a flower’s shape.

The crab spider Epicadus heterogaster, which lives in Brazil, always seems to be dressed in a carnival costume that makes it look like a flower: it has a white, yellow or purple body colour and conspicuous abdominal protuberances. By mimicking a flower, it attracts insects that use to visit flowers to collect nectar, meanwhile pollinating the flowers. All it has to do next, is extend its legs and grab the victims – and the pollinators become prey.

Now, Camila Vieira and colleagues present proof that the crab spider’s colour attracts pollinators.

Sunscreen

Like many flowers, Epicadus heterogaster has an ultraviolet component in its body colour. We cannot see that colour, but insects do and some insects prefer it. The spider’s colour stands out clearly against the green leaves on which she awaits her visitors.

In order to demonstrate that the spiders’ colour indeed lures insects, the researchers treated anesthetized females with sunscreen that blocks ultraviolet light. When they applied the sunscreen on a female’s back, passing pollinators no longer saw an ultraviolet colour and didn’t approach the spider; in contrast, they avoided it. But when the sunscreen was applied not on the dorsal side, but on the ventral side of a spider, it remained attractive to pollinators. Its flowerlike appearance undoubtedly  contributes to the deceit.

Inconspicuous

Juvenile female spiders are coloured like adults, also mimicking a flower, but they exploit their disguise in another manner. They’re not sitting on a leaf to attract pollinators, as they are too small to be of any interest to them anyway, and by being conspicuous, they would attract predators. Instead, youngsters are observed mostly on flowers, where they are perfectly camouflaged.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Alex Popovkin (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0)

Epicadus heterogaster on YouTube

Source:
Vieira, C., E.N. Ramires, J. Vasconcellos-Neto, R.J. Poppi & G.Q. Romero, 2017. Crab spider lures prey in flowerless neighborhoods. Scientific Reports 7: 9188. Doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09456-y

Hypocritical behaviour

4 September 2017 /

Cheating cleaner wrasse cares about its reputation

cheating cleaner wrasse cares about its reputation

In some circumstances, cleaner wrasse attract clients by presenting themselves as more friendly than they really are – and subsequently provide them a bad service, as research by Sandra Binning and colleagues reveals.

Anyone who runs a business should care about a good reputation, and the bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, definitely does. These fish try hard to be seen as cooperative partners, especially when they are exploitative partners in reality; in the words of Sandra Binning and colleagues, they have reputation management abilities.

The cleaner fish occupy a cleaning station on a reef and offer a cleaning service to other fish: the cleaners eat ectoparasites off the surface of their clients. It is a flourishing business, with cleaners on average being involved in two thousand interactions a day with more than a hundred clients; some clients come for inspection many times a day. Both partners benefit from the interactions – clients are cleaned, cleaners earn a meal – so, they have a mutualistic relationship. But a cleaner may cheat its client by taking a bite from its mucus, a layer that protects against abrasions or ultraviolet radiation, instead of removing parasites. A cleaner prefers eating the mucus over parasites, as it is more nutritious.

Temptation

Mostly, cleaners provide honest services. They just have to, because if they bite a client, that client will either leave and visit another cleaning station or chase the cleaner away from its station, making it impossible to continue its work for a while; and some clients are predatory fish that may ingest a cheating cleaner. Also, there are bystanders, waiting clients or potential clients, that eavesdrop on ongoing interactions and that notice when a cleaner bites its current client, as that client will involuntary make a short jolt in response. For the audience, the occurrence of a jolt is a reason to avoid that cleaner.

So, most cleaners behave in a decent manner. They will not bite, especially not when other fish are witnessing. Still, some cleaner wrasse sometimes behave badly, mainly females in the spawning season, when their energy demands are high and, accordingly, the temptation to cheat is high.

Friendly

As biting cleaners run a risk to lose their clients, they care about their reputation: they behave friendly towards small clients and provide these clients tactile stimulation by hovering above them and touching them with their pelvis fins.

Clients like this stimulation; it reduces their stress. Cooperative cleaners use to perform this behaviour infrequently to persuade a client to have itself inspected and cleaned, or to reconcile after a bite and prevent the client from fleeing or becoming aggressive, or to appease predatory fish. It is costly behaviour, because cleaners cannot eat while stroking a client.

But a biting cleaner that titillates a small client, does so for another reason, as the researchers found out before. Small clients offer less parasites and less mucus than larger clients. To stimulate them in order to keep friends with them would hardly be worth the effort, and in most cases it is unnecessary. Instead, the service of a cheater towards small clients is meant to attract larger observing clients, by showing them how friendly it behaves. When a large potential client sees the high service quality that the small client receives and approaches to be cleaned, the cheater can take a big bite of that large client’s mucus.

Witnesses

Now, the researchers show that biting cleaners only perform their hypocritical behaviour when it pays, that is: when many clients and many competing cleaners are around to witness. In such circumstances, cheaters often stroke small clients and bite the large clients that are misled by this nice behaviour. But when just a few clients and a few competitors are around, they will bite their small clients as well. They may be friendly, but only when an audience is looking.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Bluestreak wrasse, Labriodes dimidiatus, and clients. Keith Wilson (via Flickr, Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0)

Sources:
Binning, S.A., O. Rey, S, Wismer, Z. Triki., G. Glauser, M. C. Soares & R. Bshary, 2017. Reputation management promotes strategic adjustment of service quality in cleaner wrasse. Scientific Reports 7: 8425. Doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-07128-5
Pinto, A., J. Oates, A. Grutter & R. Bshary, 2011. Cleaner wrasses Labroides dimidiatus are more cooperative in the presence of an audience. Current Biology 21: 1140-1144. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.021
Bshary, R. & A.S. Grutter, 2006. Image scoring and cooperation in a cleaner fish mutualism. Nature 441: 975-978. Doi: 10.1038/nature04755
Bshary, R., 2002. Biting cleaner fish use altruism to deceive image-scoring client reef fish. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 269: 2087-2093. Doi: 10.1098/rspb.2002.2084
Bshary, R. & M. Würth, 2001. Cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus manipulate client reef fish by providing tactile stimulation. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 268: 1495-1501. Doi: 10.1098/rspb.2001.1701

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