Treatment | Number | Ejected | Deserted | Accepted (%) |
|---|
Manipulated nests |
Control (touch) | 89 | 0 | 5 | 84 (94.4) |
Mimetic |
Blue model | 12 | 2 | 2 | 8 (66.7) |
Conspecific | 14 | 0 | 0 | 14 (100.0) |
Non-mimetic |
Spotted model | 13 | 6 | 1 | 6 (46.2) |
Immaculate model | 7 | 2 | 0 | 5 (71.4) |
Spotted own egg | 17 | 0 | 1 | 16 (94.1) |
Black own egg | 22 | 10 | 2 | 10 (45.5) |
Blue great tit egg | 25 | 19 | 0 | 6 (24.0) |
Cuckoo egg | 73 | 0 | 1 | 72 (98.6) |
Rim cuckoo egg put-in | 21 | 0 | 2 | 19 (90.5) |
Non-manipulated nests |
Parasitiseda
| 43 | 0 | 8 | 35 (81.4) |
Non-parasitisedb
| – | – | – | – |
- All experimental nests are detailed with the number of ejected, deserted and accepted outcomes. We do not have any ‘Excluded’ nests (cf. [24]) because we effectively prevented predation by using nails (see Methods and Fig. 1a). Additional to the mimetic blue ‘redstart’ type model and the non-mimetic spotted (speckled) model (see [24]) we used several other treatments. Data on conspecific eggs (natural host eggs) are from the present study; data on blue, spotted and immaculate (creamy white) models are from [32]; data on own eggs painted with spots or completely black are from [34], and here we additionally included the deserted nests missing in the original study. We use the terms ‘mimetic’ and ‘non-mimetic’ as terms describing the relative similarity between experimental and the host’s own eggs (i.e., not in the absolute objective sense: [37]) and to facilitate the comparison with the same categories as understood by [24]
-
aEffectively parasitised nests where at least one cuckoo egg was naturally laid into the host nest cup
-
bAccording to our standard protocol that we use in all our studies (e.g., [7, 16, 28, 32, 34]), eggs in all nests were touched, handled and measured, therefore we do not have nests without any manipulation as [24] did
