"Song and species relationships among the cuckoos Cuculidae, and a molecular genetic study of the evolution of brood parasitism"

Dr Robert B. Payne
Curator, Museum of Zoology &
Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
University of Michigan,
USA

Tuesday, 3rd February 2003: 7pm

Nature Society (Singapore)
510 Geylang Road #02-05, The Sunflower, Singapore
See map

Host: Wang Luan Keng

About the talk
The 140 cuckoos of the world include 57 brood parasites, as well as many species of nesting pairs and cooperatively breeding social groups. We have completed a molecular genetic phylogeny for all cuckoo species. We find that brood parasitism evolved on three separate occasions in the cuckoos. Several cuckoo species are not yet recognized in the Asian field guides, they are distinct in song and in morphology. These include four species of drongo cuckoo Surniculus, two species not one in the large hawk-cuckoo "Hierococcyx sparverioides" complex, and four species of hawk-cuckoo in the H. fugax group. Fieldwork continues on song recordings, especially for the koels Eudynamys and the bronze-cuckoos of Asia.

About the speaker (from the U Michigan webpage):
"My research interests include the social behavior and systematics of birds. I am interested in dispersal, parental care, cooperative behavior and brood parasitism, including phylogenetic estimates of parasites and hosts, behavioral mimicry and behavioral imprinting, sexual selection and the biology of bird song. I do fieldwork in Africa and do experimental behavior work in my laboratory and aviaries at the University of Michigan.

My fieldwork tests hypotheses about the behavioral and evolutionary associations of brood-parasitic birds and their hosts, which rear the young "parasites" as their own. My experimental research tests parental care behavior in potential and real hosts of the African brood parasites and the behavior development of the parasitic finches. In cross-fostering experiments we imprint the young of another indigobird species V. chalybeata to goldbreast, replicating an evolutionary novel host-parasite association like that in the ancestor of V raricola. In field research we sample the geographic variation in host-parasite associations in West Africa and test the genetic variation, evolutionary histories and the rates of speciation and associations of host-brood parasite associations in these and other brood parasitic birds. The experiments replicate the field context where a brood-parasitic finch switches to a new host species and this initiates a speciation event."

ALL ARE WELCOME!  

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