Egg shape in an obligate brood parasite stabilizes temperature variation during incubation

Abstract

The brood-parasitic brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) has one of the shortest incubation periods of any bird. Brown-headed cowbird eggs, and those of other avian brood parasites, tend to be more spherical due to their greater relative width. The traditional explanation for this egg shape is that it, combined with the thicker eggshells, resists host puncture-ejection. However, very few North American hosts of the brown-headed cowbird actually engage in puncture-ejection and therefore wider eggs may instead provide greater contact with a host's brood patch during incubation, especially in large host nests. We tested whether greater egg width increased mean temperature and reduced temperature variation in brown-headed cowbirds by inserting temperature probes into brown-headed cowbird and house sparrow (Passer domesticus) eggs and placing them into red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) nests. House sparrow eggs are similar in appearance and in length to cowbird eggs, but are not as wide. We found no significant relationship between brown-headed cowbird egg width and mean incubation temperature. However, brown-headed cowbird eggs experienced less temperature variation than house sparrow eggs, and within brown-headed cowbird eggs, more spherical eggs experienced less temperature variation when accounting for differences in width. These results suggest that brown-headed cowbirds may have short incubation periods in part because their eggs exhibit less temperature variation over the course of incubation. The brown-headed cowbird's egg shape may contribute to its accelerated embryonic development rate relative to host eggs of similar size, which explains its ability to hatch in a variety of host nests.

Keywords: Molothrus ater; brood parasitism; brown-headed cowbird; development; egg shape; incubation; temperature; thermoregulation.

Figure 1.

Photographs showing (A) a clutch of house sparrow eggs and (B) a parasitized red-winged blackbird nest containing 3 host eggs and 1 cowbird egg, which demonstrate the similar spotting patterns between cowbird and sparrow eggs.

Figure 2.

Two box plots with a jitter plot overlayed displaying the central tendency and variability of temperature variation in brown-headed cowbird eggs (n = 26) and house sparrow eggs (n = 15). The plot indicates that cowbirds have a lower variability in temperature variation compared to sparrows.