Cuckoo
Cuckoos | |
---|---|
Fan-tailed cuckoo (Cacomantis flabelliformis) | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Clade: | Otidimorphae |
Order: | Cuculiformes , 1830
Wagler |
Family: | Cuculidae Leach, 1819 |
Type genus | |
Cuculus | |
Genera | |
33 genera, see text |
Cuckoos are
The cuckoos are generally medium-sized, slender birds. Most species live in trees, though a sizeable minority are ground-dwelling. The family has a
Cuckoos have played a role in human culture for thousands of years, appearing in
Description
Cuckoos are medium-sized birds that range in size from the
The subfamily Cuculinae comprises the brood-parasitic cuckoos of the Old World.
The
Distribution and habitat
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2019) |
The cuckoos have a
The Cuculinae are the most widespread subfamily of cuckoos, and are distributed across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Oceania. Amongst the Phaenicophaeinae, the malkohas and Asian ground cuckoos are restricted to southern Asia, the couas are
For the cuckoos, suitable habitat provides a source of food (principally insects and especially caterpillars) and a place to breed; for
Migration
Most species of cuckoo are sedentary, but some undertake regular seasonal migrations, and others undertake partial migrations over part of their range.
Species breeding at higher latitudes migrate to warmer climates during the winter due to food availability. The
Within Africa, 10 species make regular intracontinental migrations that are described as polarised; that is, they spend the nonbreeding season in the tropical centre of the continent and move north and south to breed in the more arid and open savannah and deserts.[13] This is the same as the situation in the Neotropics, where no species have this migration pattern, or tropical Asia, where a single species does. About 83% of the Australian species are partial migrants within Australia or travel to New Guinea and Indonesia after the breeding season.[14]
In some species, the migration is
Behaviour and ecology
The cuckoos are, for the most part, solitary birds that seldom occur in pairs or groups. The biggest exception to this are the anis of the Americas, which have evolved cooperative breeding and other social behaviours. For the most part, the cuckoos are also diurnal as opposed to nocturnal, but many species
Most cuckoos are
The parasitic cuckoos are generally not recorded as participating in
Several koels, couas, and the channel-billed cuckoo feed mainly on fruit,[21] but they are not exclusively frugivores. The parasitic koels and channel-billed cuckoo in particular consume mainly fruit when raised by frugivore hosts such as the Australasian figbird and pied currawong. Other species occasionally take fruit, as well. Couas consume fruit in the dry season when prey is harder to find.[17]
Breeding
The cuckoos are an extremely diverse group of birds with regards to breeding systems.[6] Most are monogamous, but exceptions exist. The anis and the guira cuckoo lay their eggs in communal nests, which are built by all members of the group. Incubation, brooding, and territorial defence duties are shared by all members of the group. Within these species, the anis breed as groups of monogamous pairs, but the guira cuckoos are not monogamous within the group, exhibiting a polygynandrous breeding system. This group nesting behaviour is not completely cooperative; females compete and may remove others' eggs when laying theirs. Eggs are usually only ejected early in the breeding season in the anis, but can be ejected at any time by guria cuckoos.[22] Polyandry has been confirmed in the African black coucal and is suspected to occur in the other coucals, perhaps explaining the reversed sexual dimorphism in the group.[23]
Most cuckoo species, including malkohas, couas, coucals, and roadrunners, and most other American cuckoos, build their own nests, although a large minority engages in brood parasitism (see below). Most of these species nest in trees or bushes, but the coucals lay their eggs in nests on the ground or in low shrubs. Though on some occasions nonparasitic cuckoos parasitize other species, the parent still helps feed the chick.
The nests of cuckoos vary in the same way as the breeding systems. The nests of malkohas and Asian ground cuckoos are shallow platforms of twigs, but those of coucals are globular or domed nests of grasses. The New World cuckoos build saucers or bowls in the case of the New World ground cuckoos.[6]
Nonparasitic cuckoos, like most other nonpasserines, lay white eggs, but many of the parasitic species lay coloured eggs to match those of their passerine hosts.
The young of all species are
Brood parasitism
About 56 of the Old World species and three of the New World cuckoo species (
The cuckoo egg hatches earlier than the host eggs, and the cuckoo chick grows faster; in most cases, the chick evicts the eggs and/or young of the host species. The chick has no time to learn this behavior, nor does any parent stay around to teach it, so it must be an instinct passed on genetically.
One reason for the cuckoo egg's hatching sooner is that, after the egg is fully formed, the female cuckoo holds it in her oviduct for another 24 hours prior to laying.[26] This means that the egg has already had 24 hours of internal incubation. Furthermore, the cuckoo's internal temperature is 3-4 °C higher than the temperature at which the egg is incubated in the nest, and the higher temperature means that the egg incubates faster, so at the time it is laid, the egg has already had the equivalent of 30 hours incubation in a nest.[26]
The chick encourages the host to keep pace with its high growth rate with its rapid begging call
Since obligate brood parasites need to successfully trick their host for them to reproduce, they have evolved adaptations at several stages of breeding. High costs of parasitism are exerted on the host, leading to strong selections on the host to recognize and reject parasitic eggs. The adaptations and counter-adaptations between hosts and parasites have led to a coevolution "arms race". This means that if one of the species involved were to stop adapting, it would lose the race to the other species, resulting in decreased fitness of the losing species.[30] The egg-stage adaptation is the best studied stage of this arms race.
Cuckoos have various strategies for getting their eggs into host nests. Different species use different strategies based on host defensive strategies. Female cuckoos have secretive and fast laying behaviors, but in some cases, males have been shown to lure host adults away from their nests so that the females can lay their eggs in the nest.[31] Some host species may directly try to prevent cuckoos laying eggs in their nest in the first place – birds whose nests are at high risk of cuckoo-contamination are known to "mob" attack cuckoos to drive them out of the area.[32] Parasitic cuckoos are grouped into gentes, with each gens specializing in a particular host. Some evidence suggests that the gentes are genetically different from one another.
Female parasitic cuckoos sometimes specialize and lay eggs that closely resemble the eggs of their chosen host. Some birds are able to distinguish cuckoo eggs from their own, leading to those eggs least like the host's being thrown out of the nest.[29] Parasitic cuckoos that show the highest levels of egg mimicry are those whose hosts exhibit high levels of egg rejection behavior.[33] Some hosts do not exhibit egg rejection behavior and the cuckoo eggs look very dissimilar from the host eggs. It has also been shown in a study of the European common cuckoos that females lay their egg in the nest of a host that has eggs that look similar to its own.[34] Other species of cuckoo lay "cryptic" eggs, which are dark in color when their hosts' eggs are light.[31] This is a trick to hide the egg from the host, and is exhibited in cuckoos that parasitize hosts with dark, domed nests. Some adult parasitic cuckoos completely destroy the host's clutch if they reject the cuckoo egg.[31] In this case, raising the cuckoo chick is less of a cost than the alternative, total clutch destruction.
Two main hypotheses on the cognitive mechanisms mediate host distinguishing of eggs. One hypothesis is true recognition, which states that a host compares eggs present in its clutch to an internal template (learnt or innate), to identify if parasitic eggs are present.[35] However, memorizing a template of a parasitic egg is costly and imperfect and likely not identical to each host's egg. The other one is the discordancy hypothesis, which states that a host compares eggs in the clutch and identifies the odd ones.[35] However, if parasitic eggs made the majority of eggs in the clutch, then hosts ends up rejecting their own eggs. More recent studies have found that both mechanisms more likely contribute to host discrimination of parasitic eggs since one compensates for the limitations of the other.[36]
The parasitism is not necessarily entirely detrimental to the host species. A 16-year dataset was used in 2014 to find that carrion crow nests in a region of northern Spain were more successful overall (more likely to produce at least one crow fledgling) when parasitised by the great spotted cuckoo. The researchers attributed this to a strong-smelling predator-repelling substance secreted by cuckoo chicks when attacked, and noted that the interactions were not necessarily simply parasitic or mutualistic.[37][38] This relationship was not observed for any other host species, or for any other species of cuckoo. Great spotted cuckoo chicks do not evict host eggs or young, and are smaller and weaker than carrion crow chicks, so both of these factors may have contributed to the effect observed.
However, subsequent research using a dataset from southern Spain [39] failed to replicate these findings, and the second research team also criticised the methodology used in experiments described in the first paper. The authors of the first study have responded to points made in the second [40] and both groups agree that further research is needed before the mutualistic effect can be considered proven.
Calls
Cuckoos are often highly secretive, and in many cases, best known for their wide repertoire of
The cuckoo family gets its English and scientific names from the call of the male cuckoo, also familiar from
Phylogeny and evolution
The family Cuculidae was introduced by English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1819.[42][43]
Very little fossil record of cuckoos has been found, and their evolutionary history remains unclear. Dynamopterus was an Oligocene genus of large cuckoo,[44] though it may have been related to cariamas, instead.[45]
A 2014 genome analysis by Erich Jarvis and collaborators found a clade of birds that contains the orders Cuculiformes (cuckoos), Musophagiformes (turacos), and Otidiformes (bustards). This has been named the Otidimorphae.[3] Relationships between the orders is unclear.
The following
Cuculidae |
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Taxonomy and systematics
For the living members of each genus, see the article
The family Cuculidae contains 150 species which are divided into 33 genera. These numbers include two species that have become extinct in historical times: the
- Subfamily Crotophaginae – New World group-living cuckoos
- Genus Guira – guira cuckoo
- Genus Crotophaga – true anis (3 species)
- Subfamily Neomorphinae – New World ground cuckoos
- Genus Tapera – striped cuckoo
- Genus Dromococcyx (2 species)
- Genus Morococcyx – lesser ground cuckoo
- Genus Geococcyx– roadrunners (2 species)
- Genus Neomorphus – Neotropical ground-cuckoos (5 species)
- Subfamily Centropodinae – coucals
- Genus Centropus – (29 species)
- Subfamily Couinae – Madagasy and South East Asian ground cuckoos
- Genus Carpococcyx – Asian ground-cuckoos (3 species)
- Genus extinct)
- Subfamily Cuculinae
- Genus Rhinortha– Raffles's malkoha
- Tribe Phaenicophaeini
- Genus Ceuthmochares – yellowbills (2 species)
- Genus Taccocua– Sirkeer malkoha
- Genus Zanclostomus– red-billed malkoha
- Genus Phaenicophaeus – typical malkohas (6 species)
- Genus Dasylophus – (2 species)
- Genus Rhamphococcyx– yellow-billed malkoha
- Genus Clamator – (4 species)
- Genus Coccycua – formerly in Coccyzus and Piaya, includes Micrococcyx (3 species)
- Genus Piaya – (2 species)
- Genus Coccyzus – includes Saurothera and Hyetornis (13 species)
- Tribe Cuculini – brood-parasitic cuckoos of the Old World
- Genus Pachycoccyx – thick-billed cuckoo
- Genus Microdynamis – dwarf koel
- Genus Eudynamys– typical koels (3 species)
- Genus Scythrops – channel-billed cuckoo
- Genus Urodynamis– Pacific long-tailed cuckoo
- Genus Chrysococcyx – bronze cuckoos (13 species)
- Genus Cacomantis – (10 species)
- Genus Surniculus – drongo-cuckoos (4 species)
- Genus Cercococcyx – long-tailed cuckoos (4 species)
- Genus Hierococcyx – hawk-cuckoos (8 species)
- Genus Cuculus – typical cuckoos (11 species)
- † Genus Nannococcyx – Saint Helena cuckoo (extinct)
- Genus
- Fossils
- Genus Dynamopterus (fossil: Late Eocene/Early Oligocene of Caylus, Tarn-et-Garonne, France)
- Genus Cursoricoccyx (fossil: Early Miocene of Logan County, USA) – Neomorphinae?
- Cuculidae gen. et sp. indet. (fossil: Early Pliocene of Lee Creek Mine, USA)[48]
- Genus Neococcyx (fossil: Early Oligocene of Central North America)
- Genus Eocuculus (fossil: Late Eocene of Teller County, USA)[49]
In human culture
In
The orchestral composition "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" by Frederick Delius imitates sounds of the cuckoo.[55]
The greater roadrunner, a cuckoo, is the state bird of the US state of
Since 1962,
The metaphor of the cuckoo's egg is referenced in the title of the anime and manga series A Couple of Cuckoos, where two infants are switched at birth and raised by the other's family.
References
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- ^ Payne 1997, p. 513.
- ^ Bogert, C (1937) Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. 34, The distribution and the migration of the long-tailed cuckoo (Urodynamis taitensis Sparrman). American Museum Novitates 933 12 p.
- ^ Payne 1997, p. 519.
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- ^ BTO Cuckoo migration tracking study
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- ^ Powell, R; Henderson, R. "Avian Predators of West Indian Reptiles" (PDF). Iguana. 15 (1): 8–11.
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- ^ Corlett, R; Ping, I (1995). "Frugivory by koels in Hong Kong". Memoirs of the Hong Kong Natural History Society. 20: 221–22.
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- ^ a b c Payne 2005.
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- ^ ISBN 978-1-4088-5658-1. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
- ^ Payne 2005, p. 127.
- ^ Adams, Stephen (2009-01-04). "Cuckoo chicks dupe foster parents from the moment they hatch". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on February 13, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
Cuckoo chicks start to mimic the cries that their foster parents' young make from the moment they hatch, a scientist has proved.
- ^ ISBN 0-8053-1957-3
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- ^ "Science: Parasitic Cuckoos Provide Nest Protection for Crow Hosts". American Association for the Advancement of Science. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
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- ^ Leach, William Elford (1819). "Eleventh Room". Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (15th ed.). London: British Museum. pp. 63-68 [68]. Although the name of the author is not specified in the document, Leach was the Keeper of Zoology at the time.
- ^ Bock, Walter J. (1994). History and Nomenclature of Avian Family-Group Names. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. Vol. 222. New York: American Museum of Natural History. pp. 141, 245.
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- ISBN 0-19-850213-3.
- ^ Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (January 2022). "Turacos, bustards, cuckoos, mesites, sandgrouse". IOC World Bird List Version 12.1. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
- ^ Olson, Storrs L. (1985). "Section VII.C. Cuculidae". In Farner, D.S.; King, J.R.; Parkes, Kenneth C. (eds.). Avian Biology. Vol. 8. New York: Academic Press.
- ^ Chandler, R.M. (1999). "Fossil birds of Florissant, Colorado: with a description of a new genus and species of cuckoo". In Santucci, V.L.; McClelland, L. (eds.). National Park Service Paleontological Research : Technical Report NPS/NRGRD/GRDTR-99/03 (PDF) (Report). United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Geological Resource Division. pp. 49–53.
- ^ Lang, Andrew (1887). "Chapter 17: Greek divine myths". Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Volume 2. Ballantyne Press. p. 179.
- ^ Shakespeare, William. "Song: "When daisies pied and violets blue"". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
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- ^ "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring". IMSLP Petrucci Library. Retrieved 4 October 2019.
Sources
- Payne, R.B. (1997). "Family Cuculidaee (Cuckoos)". In del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Sargatal, J. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World. Vol. 4: Sandgrouse to Cuckoos. Barcelona, Spain: Lynx Edicions. pp. 508–545. ISBN 978-84-87334-22-1.
- Payne, Robert B. (2005). The Cuckoos. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850213-5.