| plasmodium octamerium n. sp., an avian malaria parasite from the pintail whydah bird vidua macroura. | | 1968 | 5719065 |
| low survival of parasite chicks may result from their imperfect adaptation to hosts rather than expression of defenses against parasitism. | host parents exhibit a variety of behaviors toward avian brood parasites, but not all of their actions have necessarily evolved in response to costs imposed by parasites. to investigate whether common waxbills (estrilda astrild) have evolved defenses specifically against parasitic pin-tailed whydahs (vidua macroura), i studied the specificity and flexibility of host behaviors toward nestlings at two sites that differed significantly in parasitism rates and intensities. i focused on documenting n ... | 2005 | 16261738 |
| shared neural substrates for song discrimination in parental and parasitic songbirds. | in many social animals, early exposure to conspecific stimuli is critical for the development of accurate species recognition. obligate brood parasitic songbirds, however, forego parental care and young are raised by heterospecific hosts in the absence of conspecific stimuli. having evolved from non-parasitic, parental ancestors, how brood parasites recognize their own species remains unclear. in parental songbirds (e.g. zebra finch taeniopygia guttata), the primary and secondary auditory forebr ... | 2016 | 27095589 |
| dispersal ecology versus host specialization as determinants of ectoparasite distribution in brood parasitic indigobirds and their estrildid finch hosts. | brood parasitic birds offer a unique opportunity to examine the ecological and evolutionary determinants of host associations in avian feather lice (phthiraptera). brood parasitic behaviour effectively eliminates vertical transfer of lice between parasitic parents and offspring at the nest, while at the same time providing an opportunity for lice associated with the hosts of brood parasites to colonize the brood parasites as well. thus, the biology of brood parasitism allows a test of the relati ... | 2007 | 17181733 |