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Science 16 October 1998:
Vol. 282. no. 5388, p. 377
DOI: 10.1126/science.282.5388.377h
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This Week in Science
Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, but little else has been known about their mating behavior and host specificity--because parents do not attend nests, they are particularly difficult to study. Marchetti et al. (p. 471; see the news story by Morell) obtained samples from the Japanese common cuckoo population for analysis with microsatellite DNA markers. Mist nets were used to capture the majority of adults, and eggs were hatched in the lab before returning the nestlings to their nests. Males and female cuckoos both proved to be polygamous, but while female cuckoos were host-specific, the males did not restrict themselves to mating with just one race of females. This behavior may explain why there are different host races of the common cuckoo but not different species: Host specialization by females sets the stage for speciation, but this process is circumvented by gene flow through the male line.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)
